If not soft balancing, then what? Reconsidering soft balancing and U.S. policy toward China

Security Studies

Volumn 17, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 363-395

  He, Kai ^a   Feng, Huiyun ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 46949107524     PISSN: 09636412     EISSN: 15561852     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09636410802098776     Document Type: Article

References (101)

1. See Kenneth Waltz, "Structural Realism after the Cold War," International Security 25, no. 1 (2000): 5-41
2. Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, "American Primacy in Perspective," Foreign Affairs 81, no. 4 (July/August 2002): 20-33
3. William Wohlforth, "The Stability of a Unipolar World," International Security 24, no. 1 (1999): 5-41.
4. The reactions to the U.S. preemptive national strategy after the September 11 tragedies and the U.S. war with Iraq in 2003 worry Waltzian scholars that "the world is pushing back""" or that balancing against the United States is under way. For soft-balancing arguments, see Robert Pape, "Soft Balancing against the United States," International Security 30, no. 1 (2005): 7-45
5. T.V. Paul, "Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy," International Security 30, no. 1 (2005): 46-71.
6. See Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, "Hard Times for Soft Balancing," International Security 30, no. 1 (2005): 72-108
7. Keir Lieber and Gerard Alexander, "Waiting for Balancing: Why the World Is Not Pushing Back," International Security 30, no. 1 (2005): 109-39.
8. For an academic exchange over pros and cons of soft-balancing arguments, see Robert Art, Stephen Brooks, William Wohlforth, Keir Lieber, and Gerard Alexander, "Correspondence: Striking the Balance," International Security 30, no. 3 (2006): 177-96.
9. Brooks and Wohlforth, "Hard Time for Soft Balancing," 77.
10. Both defensive and offensive realists agree that security is the highest end of states, but they differ on how to achieve security. While Waltz as a defensive realist argues that balancing of power is the right way for achieving security, Mearsheimer suggests maximizing power to attain security.
11. See Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 1st ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979)
12. John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001).
13. On arguments against territorial occupation, see Mark W. Zacher, "The Territorial Integrity Norm," International Organization 55, no. 2 (2001): 215-50
14. Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
15. It is worth noting that T.V. Paul argues that since states no longer worry about sovereign territorial existence, second-tier major powers forego traditional military balancing and choose soft balancing instead. While acknowledging this interesting and insightful argument, we see the two dimensions of security, territorial survival and political autonomy, as indivisible and argue that the reasons for soft balancing are more complicated. We will discuss the conditions for soft balancing later.
16. On T.V. Paul's arguments, see T.V. Paul, "Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy."
17. On the "Asian value" debate, see Fareed Zakaria, "Culture is Destiny: A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew," Foreign Affairs 73, no. 6 (1994): 189-94
18. Mahathir Mohamad, The Asian Values Debate (Kuala Lumpur: Institute of Strategic and International Studies, 1997).
19. We borrow the phrase from Wendt's anarchy argument. See Alexander Wendt, "Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics," International Organization 46, no. 2 (1992): 391-425.
20. See Stephen Walt, "Keeping the World 'Off Balance': Self Restraint and U.S. Foreign Policy," in America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power, ed. G. John Ikenberry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 134-35.12 Ibid., 81.
21. See Brooks and Wohlforth, "Hard Times for Soft Balancing," 79-83.
22. Ibid., 81.
23. Colin Elman suggests that there are two types of balance of power effects in the system, the manual balance of power and the automatic balance of power. The former needs clear intentions of balancing from a major power in order to form the balance of power in the system; the latter depends on negative feedback in the system to resume the defaulted balance of power in the system even though some states do not balance against the powerful states. We extend the distinction of automatic versus manual balance of power to account for the unintended outcome of state balancing behavior as automatic balancing.
24. On manual balance of power and automatic balance of power, see Colin Elman, "Introduction," in Realism and the Balancing of Power, ed. John Vasquez and Colin Elman (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002), 10-13.
25. See Brooks and Wohlforth, "Hard Times for Soft Balancing," 79.
26. See Lieber and Alexander, "Waiting for Balancing," 109-39.
27. Ibid., 132.
28. For example, see Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984)
29. Thomas Christensen and Jack Snyder, "Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity," International Organization 44, no. 2 (1990): 137-68.
30. T.V. Paul, "The Enduring Axioms of Balance of Power Theory," in Balance of Power: Theory and Practice in the 21st Century, ed. T.V. Paul, James J. Wirtz, and Michel Fortmann (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 3.
31. Elman, "Introduction," in Realism and the Balancing of Power, 8 (emphasis added).
32. Randall Schweller, "Unanswered Threats: A Neoclassical Realist Theory of Underbalancing," International Security, 29, no. 2 (2004), 166.
33. Regarding the timing of balancing, see Jack Levy, "Balance and Balancing: Concepts, Propositions, and Research Design," in Realism and the Balancing of Power, 128-52.
34. As noted above, some scholars argue that these non-balancing behaviors during peacetime are only normal statecraft or diplomatic friction. Peacetime non-balancing is certainly one of the solutions. This paper tries to redefine the concept of balancing in order to theorize the increasing, recurring diplomatic friction targeting the U.S.
35. See Lieber and Alexander, "Waiting for Balancing."
36. On normal statecraft and non-balancing arguments against balancing of power, see, for example, Paul Schroeder, "Historical Reality Versus Neo-Realist Theory," International Security 19, no. 1 (1994): 108-48
37. John Vasquez, "The Realist Paradigm and Degenerative Versus Progressive Research Programs: An Appraisal of Neotraditional Research on Waltz's Balancing Proposition," American Political Science Review 91, no. 4 (1997): 899-935.
38. Robert Art, "Correspondence: Striking the Balance," 183-84.
39. Offensive and defensive realists disagree on how much power a state should have in order to achieve security. While offensive realists, such as John Mearsheimer, argue for maximizing power for security, defensive realists, such as Kenneth Waltz, suggest balancing power for security. We highlight the importance of relative power for state security, but we treat states as sophisticated power balancers rather than power maximizers.
40. On defensive and offensive realism, see Waltz, Theory of International Politics
41. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
42. The authors thank one of the reviewers for suggesting this important aspect of hard balancing.
43. See Judith Kelley, "Strategic Non-Cooperation as Soft Balancing: Why Iraq Was Not Just About Iraq," International Politics 42, no. 2 (2005): 153-73.
44. See Christensen and Snyder, "Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks," 137-68.
45. There is a longtime debate on the relationship between economic interdependence and international conflict. Although commercial liberals believe economic interdependence decreases the possibility of international conflict, neorealists argue that economic interdependence increases the danger of war. In addition, some scholars contend that trade has negligible effects on peace, and others argue that the role of economic interdependence depends on other variables, such as democracy, in affecting relations between states. Standing in between commercial liberalism and neorealism, we suggest that economic dependence increases the cost of hard-balancing behavior for a state against its rival, but it does not necessarily assure peace between states. The dependent variable in this research is state behavior, hard balancing or soft balancing, rather than political outcomes, war, or peace among states.
46. For the debate on trade or interdependence and international conflict, see Katherine Barbieri and Gerald Schneider, "Globalization and Peace: Assessing New Direction in the Study of Trade and Conflict,"Journal of Peace Research 36, no. 4 (1999): 387-404
47. Susan McMillan, "Interdependence and Conflict," Mershon International Studies Review 41, no. 1 (1997): 33-58
48. Edward Mansfield and Brian M. Pollins, eds., Economic Interdependence and International Conflict: New Perspectives on an Enduring Debate (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2003).
49. For the expansion nature of imperialism, see Joseph Schumpeter, Imperialism and Social Classes (New York: Augustus M. Kelley Pubs., 1951).
50. See Bevin Alexander, How America Got It Right: The U.S. March to Military and Political Supremacy (New York: Crown, 2005), 79-80.
51. It should be noted that the reasons for the outbreak of WWI are still highly contested in both history and international relations. For the arguments that trade competition and the expansion of imperialism lead to WWI, see Bevin Alexander, How America Got It Right
52. Vladimir Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1948).
53. See Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
54. It should be noted that the timing of balancing is still a debatable topic in IR. Some scholars, such as Jack Levy and Randall Schweller, argue that a response to a direct military attack or threat is not a balancing behavior. Instead, when "a state is not directly menaced by a predatory state but decides to balance against it anyway to protect its long term security interests," it constitutes a balancing behavior.
55. See Randall Schweller, "Unanswered Threats: A Neoclassical Realist Theory of Underbalancing," International Security 29, no. 2 (2004), 167
56. Levy, "Balance and Balancing," in Realism and the Balancing of Power, 135.
57. For methodological discussions on "crucial cases" or "most likely and least likely cases," see Harry Eckstein, "Case Studies in Political Science," in Handbook of Political Science, vol. 7, ed. Fred Greenstein and Nelson Polsby (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1975)
58. Alexander George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).
59. See George and Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development, 121.
60. For the overexpansion arguments, see Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
61. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987).
62. For new anti-soft-balancing arguments, see Brooks, Wohlforth, Alexander, and Lieber in this paper.
63. For example, see Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro, The Coming Conflict with China (New York: A.A. Knopf, distributed by Random House, 1997)
64. Denny Roy, "Hegemon on the Horizon? China's Threat to East Asian Security," International Security 19, no. 1 (1994): 149-68.
65. See Kishore Mahbubani, "The Pacific Impulse,"Survival 37, no. 1 (1995)
66. Andrew Nathan and Robert Ross, The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China's Search for Security (New York: Norton, 1997)
67. Robert Ross, "China II: Beijing as a Conservative Power,"Foreign Affairs 76, no. 2 (March/April 1997): 33-44.
68. One reviewer has suggested that economic engagement could be seen as a soft-balancing strategy since economic engagement will increase the economic interdependence between the two states and in turn will prevent aggressive behavior of the threatening state. While acknowledging that economic engagement could be a way for a state to cope with threats, this study does not treat economic engagement as realist "balancing" behavior. Balancing means to decrease the relative power of a rival state, but economic engagement helps the rival state increase economic power while exerting constraining effects on the threatening state's behavior. Engagement as a non-realist strategy is driven by domestic variables, such as liberal ideology and economic interests, to take advantage of an opportunity rather than cope with a threat. It is more akin to a bandwagoning strategy than a balancing strategy within the context of realist theory. A bandwagoning strategy seizes opportunities to align with the source of danger in return for safety or profit.
69. See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 126
70. Walt, The Origins of Alliances, 17, 21-22
71. Randall Schweller, "Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In," International Security 19, no. 1 (1994): 72-107.
72. Some scholars suggest a middle-way strategy between containment and engagement, such as strategies of "congagement" and "constrainment." However, these arguments are based on empirical and policy-oriented discussion rather than theoretical development.
73. See Zalmay Khalilzad, "Congage China," RAND Issue Paper, IP-187 (1999)
74. Gerald Segal, "East Asia and the 'Constrainment' of China," International Security 20, no. 4 (1996): 107-35.
75. Engagement is an international liberal or neo-liberal strategy that falls outside the scope of the realist structural analysis applied in this paper. For a realist criticism of the engagement policy, see Christopher Layne, "House of Cards: American Strategy towards China," World Policy Journal 14, no. 3 (1997): 77-95.
76. For the ideological influence in U.S. foreign policy, see Michael Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988)
77. Jie Chen, Ideology in U.S. Foreign Policy: Case Studies in U.S. China Policy (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1992).
78. How to measure economic dependence is a contested question in international relations. Oneal and Russett use "trade dependence"(total bilateral trade/GDP), while Barbieri employs vtrade share" (bilateral trade/total trade) to measure economic dependence between two countries. We choose trade share to measure economic dependence between China and the United States for two reasons. First, although trade dependence (bilateral trade/GDP) is a popular indicator to measure the importance of international trade to a country's economy, it is less accurate for the U.S.-China case. GDP consists of the net trade balance (exports minus imports) rather than total trade volume, so the current huge, but disputed, trade imbalance between the United States and China make trade/GDP measurement biased. We, therefore, follow the trade share conceptualization to use trade share as well as export share (bilateral exports/total exports) and import share (bilateral imports/total imports) to measure the bilateral trade dynamics between the United States and China. Second, we focus on examining the dynamic trend of economic dependence rather than a more static, cumulative measure of economic relations between the United States and China. It is indisputable that China's economy is more dependent on the United States than vice versa by any standard. In the future, however, China will strengthen its importance to the U.S. economy with its rapid economic growth.
79. For different measures of economic dependence, see John Oneal and Bruce Russett, "The Classical Liberals Were Right: Democracy, Interdependence, and Conflict, 1950-1985," International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 2 (1997): 267-93
80. Katherine Barbieri, "Economic Interdependence: A Path to Peace or a Source of International Conflict?" Journal of Peace Research 33, no. 1 (1996): 29-49
81. Erik Gartzke and Quan Li, "Measure for Measure: Concept Operationalization and the Trade Interdependence-Conflict Debate," Journal of Peace Research 40, no. 5 (2003): 553-71.
82. According to U.S. official data, China's exports to the United States are almost two times China's statistics. China and the United States hold different data on the volume of bilateral trade mainly because of their different treatment of products from or to China that pass through Hong Kong. China treats Hong Kong as one of the destinations of its exports, even for products transshipped to other markets. The United States counts China's exports through Hong Kong as exports from China, including goods that contain Hong Kong components or involve final assembly or processing in Hong Kong. Therefore, sometimes the Chinese data underestimate China's exports to the United States while the United States overestimates the imports from China. This statistical difference is part of the U.S.-China dispute over the trade deficit between the two countries.
83. For official FDI data, see Invest in China, http://www.fdi.gov.cn.
84. On China's new cooperative policy toward the United States, see Evan Medeiros and M. Taylor Fravel,"China's New Diplomacy," Foreign Affairs (November/December 2003). How to use the "softbalancing model" to explain China's policy toward the United States is also an interesting project, but it is beyond the scope of research for this case study.
85. For U.S. trade data, see U.S. Census Bureau, www.census.gov.
86. For data, see U.S. Department of Treasury, www.ustreas.gov.
87. For an analysis on the impacts of China's foreign reserves to U.S. economy, see BBC News, "China May Cut US Debt Holdings," BBC, 4 April 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/ 4875606.stm.
88. See Nancy Tucker, ed. China Confidential: American Diplomats and Sino-American Relations (1945-1996) (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 460-61.
89. See Jean Garrison, Making China Policy: From Nixon to G.W. Bush (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 2005), 133-57.
90. See Wang Jisi, "The Role of the United States as a Global and Pacific Power: A View from China," The Pacific Review 10, no. 1 (1997): 1-18.
91. See also David Shambaugh, "China Engages Asia: Reshaping the Regional Order," International Security 29, no. 3 (2004): 91.
92. See Jeffrey Richelson, "China and the United States: From Hostility to Engagement, 1960-1998," 6 March 1999, p. 23, National Security Archive Special Collections Series.
93. See Robert Ross, "Engagement in US China Policy," in Engaging China ed. Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert Ross (London: Routledge, 1999), 192-93.
94. Ibid., 195.
95. See Nancy Tucker, ed., China Confidential: American Diplomats and Sino-American Relations (1945-1996) (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 469.
96. See Ross, "Engagement in U.S. China Policy," 193.
97. Shirley A. Kan, Taiwan: Major U.S. Arms Sales since 1990, report prepared for Congress, 30 May 2003 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service).
98. See Jean Garrison, Making China Policy: From Nixon to G.W. Bush (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 2005), 123-24.
99. Ibid., 124.
100. It is worth noting that we can also categorize U.S. arms sales to Taiwan in between soft balancing and hard balancing. On the one hand, the United States intends to undermine China's relative power versus Taiwan (soft balancing). On the other, the United States may prepare for future hard balancing against China through its weapons sales to Taiwan, which may be a military ally of the United States in the possible future China-U.S. conflict across the Taiwan Strait. Since the interplay of power disparity and economic dependence in the soft balancing model places the United States in between cell 1 and cell 2 (Figure 2), this dual-strategy interpretation of U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan is also possible.
101. On how other states constrained U.S. power and hegemony, see Stephen Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005).