The coming age of the self-interested superpower

The coming age of the self-interested superpower
By François Heisbourg
Published: February 15 2006 20:26 | Last updated: February 15 2006 20:26. Copyright by the Financial Times

With the world’s second largest economy in purchasing power parity and the resource base to modernise its military, China is well on the road to becoming the first new superpower of the 21st century.

Rising China is not simply going to be a remake of Japan – which never made it to superpower status – because Beijing, unlike Tokyo, is a strategic free agent. In the geopolitical marketplace, it has become mandatory to anticipate China’s emergence during the next 10 to 20 years in much the same way as share prices will reflect the forecast performance of a company. But these forecasts are complicated by uncertainty regarding China’s posture vis-a-vis the US; as partner, competitor or adversary. In many ways, China is less the equivalent of Wilhelminian Germany on the eve of the first world war, fated to collide with the status quo powers in its quest of a “place in the sun”, than of the Germany of Bismarck in the 1870s and 1880s. It is a power erupting on to a crowded global scene but with no predetermined outcome as to the nature of its relations and alliances.

China, by virtue of the explosive growth of its economic appetites and production, disrupts this global scene. At the same time, it is presenting itself as a status quo power. Today’s China, unlike the US with its militant promotion of regime change in non-democratic states, has no value system to sell and no messianic mission to fulfil. This is becoming its great strength as it moves towards superpower status. It is not only the Zimbabwes, the Myanmars and the Sudans of the world that will flock to China’s self-interest-driven, value-free foreign policy, but also those states that are seeking a counter-weight to America’s assertion of its own democratic mission. Jacques Chirac, the French president, may be misguided in his vision of a multipolar world in which China would somehow deal with France as an equal. But as China’s economic and political leverage grows, it is not only the French who will rise to the bait of a Bismarckian China obstructing the Bonapartist instincts of the US.

However, China’s value-free foreign policy has significant limits. In the long run, it will inevitably create tensions with a US – and, indeed, a European Union – that sees values as an integral component of international relations. This would come on top of the more traditional causes of friction between China and the US, such as the fate of Taiwan and the nature of the strategic order in east Asia. Yet, for China, the relationship with the US remains by far the most important one to get right.

In the shorter term, the policies flowing from China’s value-blind positioning provide no clear sense of direction regarding world challenges such as global warming or, most acutely today, nuclear proliferation. China may be tempted to seize the opportunity of securing first call on Iran’s energy resources, thus preventing a unified stance in the United Nations Security Council and precipitating the breakdown of the international non- proliferation regime. Conversely, China might decide that the spread of nuclear weapons – perhaps to Japan, South Korea and even Taiwan – would run counter to its interests and that it should therefore work with the US, Europe and Russia in nudging Iran away from the nuclear threshold.

America will have to learn to balance its long-standing regional interests in east Asia with China’s ability to help or hinder at the global level, notably on the Iranian question. Washington, at some stage, will have to decide what is more important: dealing with the Iranian account (which may entail satisfying China on other issues) or constraining China in east Asia (even if this means losing China’s support on Iran in the Security Council).

Europe, in a way, has the opposite problem. The EU thinks of China in global terms but neglects the regional dimension of the US–Chinese relationship in east Asia. The Europeans are essentially passive beneficiaries of the strategic stability created by America’s military presence in the Asia-Pacific region. Compromises with China, including horse-trading on the EU arms embargo, should not be contemplated by the Europeans without due consideration of America’s strategic role in east Asia. Any miscalculation would have dire long-term consequences for US–European relations. However, the corresponding strategic dialogue between the US and the EU for dealing with such problems hardly exists.

One hopes that in the capitals of China, the US and Europe, the full implications of the new trade-offs are not only understood but acted on.

The writer is special adviser at the Fondation pour la Recheche Stratégique, Paris