Fellows Program on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia

Abstract

This paper examines potential mechanisms or pathways to military conflict between the United States and People’s Republic of China (PRC) based on prevailing approaches from International Relations (IR) Theory. Focusing on these theories and their primary causal factors, we can explain how these two Pacific powers could find themselves in a future crisis or military conflict. While offensive realism, focusing on power and shifts in relative power, would be expected to paint a particularly gloomy picture, the predictions of a defensive realist analysis, focusing on geography and military technology, are also troubling. The security dilemma in the Western Pacific seems to be intensifying, introducing crisis and arms race instabilities and escalation dynamics in the event of a crisis. Finally, many of the domestic political factors that predict more cooperative outcomes in interstate relations are weak or absent in the U.S.-China relationship. Therefore, there are few internal restraints on policies that could precipitate conflict. Conversely, these internal forces could make risky behavior more likely. Understanding these pathways to conflict, it is possible to develop policies to address the most dangerous aspects of the security environment in the Western Pacific while maintaining stability, reassuring U.S. allies, and improving the prospects of cooperation.

Quotes from the Paper

"to understand how best to avoid conflict, it is useful to identify and assess the ways in which he United States and China are most likely to find themselves on the brink of utilizing military force."

"The presence of a rising power expanding its interests in the region and demanding greater influence commensurate with its new status facing off against a status quo power and its allies has often been viewed as a driver of major power war."

"even with rational, security-driven actors directing policy in Beijing and Washington, the possibility of a military conflict arising from a diplomatic crisis is real and increasing. Relaxing assumptions of rationality and incorporating potential domestic factors like regime survival or the introduction of nationalist pressures within the Chinese domestic political system only exacerbates and complicates these troubling analyses."

"What seems important at the current time is for U.S., Chinese and regional leaders to address potential sources of conflict."

Author

David W. Kearn, Jr., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Government and Politics at St. John’s University in Queens, New York. During the 2010-2011 Academic Year, Dr. Kearn conducted research at the RAND Corporation in Washington, DC as an inaugural Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow. He is the author of Facing the Missile Challenge: U.S. Strategy and the Future of the INF Treaty, (RAND 2011). His research and teaching interests include international relations theory, U.S. Foreign policy, military innovation, comparative grand strategy, arms control and nonproliferation, and the causes of major war. Dr. Kearn is a graduate of Amherst College, holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and received his Ph.D. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.