December 7, 2022
Only Offensive Realism Can Contain China
The Biden administration’s prescriptions for containing China are largely inadequate because they are stuck in a liberal internationalist mindset that no longer fits the realities of our realist world order.
by Ionut Popescu
One of the very few areas of bipartisan consensus in American foreign policy these days is agreement on the need to contain China’s ambitious rise to regional, and potentially global, hegemony. The Biden administration’s newly released National Security Strategy (NSS) describes China as “the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.” This judgment echoed the Trump administration’s NSS. Both presidents correctly adopted an offensive realist theoretical lens to diagnose the dynamics of great power competition between Washington and Beijing.
As offensive realists have long argued, great powers live in a tragic world dominated by a continuous struggle for regional and, ultimately, global hegemony. China’s recent military buildup in the South China Sea, as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, only confirmed this time-honored, pessimistic view of world politics. However, the Biden administration’s prescriptions for containing China are largely inadequate because they are stuck in a liberal internationalist mindset that no longer fits the realities of our current realist world order. As he made clear in his recent meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, President Joe Biden still holds out hope that the two superpowers can cooperate to tackle “common global problems” and compete in an orderly fashion in other areas, rather than finding themselves in the traditional state of intense geopolitical conflict.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/only-offensive-realism-can-contain-china-205988
