The Tragedy of Great Power Politics: A Clash Between China and the United States
You ain't building a naval base at Cienfuegos. This is our hemisphere. We've got this thing called the Monroe Doctrine, stay out. Well, you know again what's good for the goose is good for the gander. So what I'm telling you here is the Chinese are gonna try to dominate Asia for good strategic reasons and that includes pushing the Americans out. Then the question you have to ask yourself is what the Americans going to do? I just told you what the Americans are going to do. We do not tolerate peer competitors. We've got four good examples that shows you how in the past we have reacted, and what you see happening now at the Trump administration is what you're going to see for many years to come.
The United States is going to get right in their face and it's gonna say you're not gonna dominate Asia, you're not going to become a regional hegemon. It is unacceptable to us and of course many of China's neighbors. All you have to do is go to Japan, South Korea, I believe Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, India. They do not want to see China become a regional hegemon, so it's not going to just be the Americans. It's gonna be the Americans along with a balancing coalition of other countries that are going to try to contain China.
And of course at the same time, the Chinese are going to try to expand, so what you're getting now and you're going to get much more of it. It's a tragedy here as Tom told you, the title of my book is the tragedy of great power politics. This is a tragic situation. I'm not happy about this fact. I hope I'm proved wrong. But what we have here is a situation where two guerrillas, the Chinese and the Americans are going to go head-to-head and in an intense security competition and there is going to be a serious chance that they end up shooting at each other and that you have a real war between them.
I'm not saying that's likely, I'm just saying that is a serious possibility. Just want to make one more point about this. This is concept in the international politics called the security dilemma, and the security dilemma is going to make this situation all that much worse. What exactly is the security dilemma? The security dilemma says that anything that one side does for defensive purposes to defend itself invariably seen by the other side is offensive in nature.
You know, there's all this talk in the wake of Secretary of State Pompeo being here about putting missiles in places like Australia, Guam, South Korea, and Japan. These are these intermediate-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, the Chinese say their missiles are defensive missiles your missiles or offensive missiles? We of course think exactly the opposite, their missiles are offensive weapons. And what we're doing is for defensive purposes. So what happens in this situation is you get this arms race going, and of course you can see the arms race happening already pivot to Asia, right. You get this arms race going, and the end result is that everything the Chinese do seems to be offensively oriented.
Now, let me just say a few words about Australia as You all know better than I do this really? creates an extremely difficult situation for Australia because it depends so heavily on economic intercourse with China, and of course at the same time it depends on the United States for its security. So Australians have a sense that they're sort of caught in between the United States and China, and by the way, if you go to South Korea, you go to Japan, and you go to other countries like Singapore, the Philippines, they all feel the same way.
So the question is what is likely to happen in the future? My view on this is that the Australians have no choice but to side with the Americans. This is not to say that Australia will stop all trade with China because I don't believe that will happen, but I do believe that the Australians will have no choice but to balance quite clearly with the Americans.
Because my bottom line, which should be clear from my argument here, is that security concerns always trump prosperity or economic concerns. Survival is the highest goal any state can have security matters the most, so I think from Australia's point of view, it makes eminently good sense to ally with the United States.
And again, this is not a happy story and again, it's a tragic story in many ways. Let me just conclude with one final comment, and that is to say what you should all really hope for is that China does not continue to grow.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enCan you really imagineAustralia aligned with China against the United States. Is that gonna happen here?You realize you would be an enemy of the United States that if the United States is involved in an intenseSecurity competition with China and you're with China against the United StatesThe United States is gonna be awfully angry and it's gonna go to great lengths to put its gun sights on youYou understand. The United States is the ruthless great power. That was the point that I tried to make in mydiscussion of how America turned itself into a regional hegemon if there was to be a conflict betweenUnited States and China whose side would Australia take well in Sydney tonightI saw professor John MearsheimerFrom America give a speech onThis exact topic. I managed to have a nice half-an-hour chat with him after the talkThere's so much footage that what I'll do is I'll break it up into two videos tonightI'll just show you guys the bulk of his speech and then tomorrowI'll try clip together the questions and the answers and I'll give you my analysis not only on John Mearsheimertalk but what I learned from John Mearsheimer in ourconversation after he gave the speechBut before we get started if you want to keep up to date with strays first and only geopolitically focus YouTube channelMake sure you click the subscribe button and click the bell iconSo don't miss out on anythingJoin me Shana is professor of political science at the University of ChicagoIt's a great pleasure to welcome professor John Muir, Shanathe question on the table tonight is can China rice peacefully andBefore I make the argument that it cannot writePeacefully, I want to make two preliminary pointsFirst of all, I'm simply assuming that China will continue to riseThere are really two questions involved when you talk about the rise of ChinaOne is will it continue to rise in an impressive way and then number two?Can it rise peacefully so you just want to understand I'm assuming that it's going to continue to riseAnd then I'm going to address the second questionmy second preliminary point is it's actually aTheoretical question and you have to have a theory to answer itandthe reason it's a theoretical question is because it deals with the future and we have no facts about the future because obviously theFuture hasn't happened yet. So you have to have a simple theory aboutgreat power politicsSo what I'm gonna do tonight is I'm very quickly gonna lay out my theory of international politicsHow the world works at the great power level number oneThen number two. I'm going to explain American behavior since 1783American foreign policy since 780 1783 andSynoptic form just to give you a sense that the United States is behaved according to the dictates of my theoryThen the third thing I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about how China is likely to behave and not surprisinglyI'm going to argue that China is going to try and imitate the United StatesandThat's why we're going to have this intense security competition between the United States and ChinathatLeaves the real possibility on the table of a possible war, okaySo let me start with my basic theory of international politics. I think that the ideal situation for any great power isto be a hegemon in its region of the world and to make sureThat it has no peer competitorwhich is another way of saying to make sure that there is no hegemon in any other area of the world andThis will become clear here as we go along. My basic argument is that there has only been oneRegional hegemon in world history and that's the United States of America in the Western Hemisphereokay, but the ideal again from an American point of view is to be a hegemon in the Western Hemisphere and make sureThat no other country is a hegemon in Europe or Asia or the Persian GulfBut mainly Europe and Asia, okay. Now, why do I say that? What's the theory here?In international politics. It's very important to understand that there's no higher authoritythat you can call on if you get into trouble in a society like Australia or the United States ifsomebody comes after you and tries to cheat you in a business deal or attack you physicallyYou can call the police. You can call your lawyer. There's a state thatSits over that society that you can turn toIn international politics if you get into troubleThere's no higher authorityAnd the problem that you face is that you may end upliving next to us of a country that has a great deal ofMilitary power and it has bad intentionsYou might end up living next door to Nazi, GermanyJust so let's talk about China's intentions. Even America's intentions were10-15 years down the roadThere's no way you can knowWhether China will have good intentions or whether China will have bad intentionsYou don't even know who's going to be in charge in China in 10 or 15 yearsyou don't even know who's going to be in charge in theUnited States in 10 or 15 years so you can't know what their intentions are. So when you have big countriesThat have a lot of military money and you can't be certain about their intentions and there's no higher authorityThat you can call on if you get into troubleThis is very powerful incentive to be what we used to call when I was a little boy on New York Cityplaygrounds the biggest and baddest dude on the blockBecause if you're big and powerful the country's don't fool around with you how many?Americans do you think go to bed at night worrying about Canada or Mexico or Guatemala?attacking the United StatesThe answer is 0 why because we are Godzilla in the Western HemisphereYou understand my point here you want to be really powerfulFor purposes of survival, this is a defensive argumentYou want to be really powerful because you can never be certainthat another state that's more powerful than you or as powerful as you won't come after you at some point andAgain, you won't have that higher authority to turn toso what you want to do is you want to be the hegemon in the system and my argument isThe globe is too big and there's too much water out there for any one country to be a globalHegemon, so the name of the game is to be a regional hegemon to dominate your region of the worldBe the most powerful state in your region by farOkay, and number two make sure that no other country in places like Europe or AsiaDominates its region so you don't have a peer competitor. That's my basic theory nowI want to switch gears and want to talk about the United States of America and I want to tell you a story about theUnited States of America that most of you don't know certainly most Americans don't know this story because we have thisIdealistic story about noble America that bears little resemblance to realitythe United States and what I'm gonna do here is try and convince you that the United States since1783 in terms of foreign policy has acted according to my theory. That's when we try and do1783 the United States started out is 13 measly colonies strung out along the Atlantic seaboardWhat did we do we marched across the continent to the Pacific Ocean?We murdered huge numbers of Native Americans. We stole their landWe went to war with Mexico in the middle of the 19th century and we stole from MexicoWhat is now the southwest of the United States we invaded Canada in 1812 for the express purpose of making?Canada part of the United Statesfor those of you who don't know the reason Toronto is not the capital ofCanada and Ottawa is the capital of Canada as they expected us to pay a return visitFurthermore with regard to the Caribbean we don't all the Caribbean now places like Cuba and PuertoRico would be American States if it weren't for the fact that it was inextricablytied up with the issue of slavery and theNorthern states said were not going into the CaribbeanBecause there are too many slaves down there. Those are slave holding States and we don't want any more slave holding Stateswe had a voracious appetite for conquest Adolf Hitler when he went into the Soviet Union in the summer of1941Sometimes talked about imitating the Americans and their ability to conquer and gain territoryHe had admired us greatly. He was trying to emulate us. He referred to the vulgar of the Volga River as my MississippiThat's how the United States was createdan expansionist country like we've never seen on the planet before but the first part ofour attempt to create regional hegemonysecond thing we did was the Monroe Doctrine in1823 old President James Monroe he told to EuropeansWe're not powerful enough to throw you out nowBut there's going to come a day where we're going to run you out of the Western HemisphereAnd once we run you out you're not welcome back. This is our hemisphereWe run it no distant great powers are allowed in our hemisphereIt's the Monroe Doctrine first part of the story. I told you is called manifest destinymarching across the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacificcreating this huge state importing huge numbers of peopleIndustrializing the country and then the second part of the story is the Monroe Doctrine getting the European great powersthe British the French the Spanish all out of the Western Hemisphere and of course by1898 we had done that we had created regional hegemonyWhat was their second goal our second goal as I told you to make sure we didn't have a peer competitorWe did not want any other country on the planet to dominate its region the way we dominate the Western HemisphereWe had four potential peer competitors in the 20th centuryImperial Germany Imperial Japan Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union we helped contain and defeat allFor them we helped put all four of them on the scrap heap of historywe entered World War one when it looked like the Germans were gonna win in April of1917 and help to finish them offregard to the JapaneseWe beat them single-handedly in World War two and we helped the Soviet Union which played the key role inDefeating Nazi Germany in World War two and then of course the United States played the principal role in containing the Soviet UnionDuring the Cold War and then we gladly ushered them down the toilet ball when they fell apartThe United States does not tolerate peer competitors. That's my basic storyNow let's talk about the ChineseMy argument as I told you is that the Chinese are going to imitate the United StatesThey're gonna want to dominate Asia the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere. And of course you understand my argumentIs that makes perfectly good sense from their point of view when I'm in Beijing?I always tell the Chinese if I were playing your hand I try to dominate Asia. I try and drive the Americans outRight, so I don't think they're foolish herewhat I'm telling you is they're gonna imitate the Americans and theAmericans acted according to my theory and the Chinese are going to act according to my theoryWhy because it's the best way to survive in a world where there's no higher authorityYou could turn to and you can never be certain about the intentions of other statesOkay, so let's talk a little bit about the Chinesemy first point is they're going to want to be by far the most powerful country in this region andThey should be you know, what happened when the Chinese were weak. It's called the century of national humiliationChinese know what happens when you're weak or the great power is pick on you?You don't want to be weak in the systemYou want to be really powerful if you're Chinese, so you have two choices oneYou can be 20 times more powerful than Japan or number two. Japan can be 20 times more powerful than youWhich one do you think they'll choose? They won't even think twice the answersThey want to be 20 times more powerful than JapanYou want to be 20 times more power?Then there they are great power in your region and every other great power on the planet if you canWhy because it's the best way to survivein a system with no higher authoritySo the Chinese are determined to be very powerfulThey're feeling really good about the fact that they're growingEconomically and translating that economic might in the military might and I don't blame one bed. It's one thingI like about being an American. We are GodzillaI don't have to worry about the survival of the United States of AmericaIf you're a small country and you live next door to one of those gorillas, you better be really careful CubaThey got uppity with us. Do you remember when Fidel Castro was running the place?We still have not forgiven them and you want to be big you want to be powerfulSo that's number one number two as I told you remember the Monroe Doctrine you want to get the Americans?out ofEast Asia right. You don't want the Americans around?We have the Monroe Doctrine as my mother taught me when I was a little boyWhat's good for the goose is good for the gander. Don't you think they're going to have a man or a doctrine?They'll tell you behind closed doors. Well, we get powerful enoughWe're driving the Americans out beyond the first island chain, and then we'll drive them out beyond the second island chain and againI don't blame them one bitIf I'm Chinese, that's exactly what I want. I do not wantAmerican aircraft and American ships running up and down my coastline the Americans go ballisticWhen any foreign country drives military forces into the Western Hemisphere?Some of you are probably old enough to remember the Cuban Missile CrisisYou remember how excited we got when we discovered that there were missiles in Cuba?And then the Soviets talked about putting a naval base at cienfuegos. We told them in no uncertain termsYou ain't building a naval base at cienfuegos. This is our hemisphere. We've got this thing called the Monroe Doctrine stay outWell, you know again what's good for the goose is good for the ganderSo what I'm telling you here is the Chinese are gonna try to dominateAsia for good strategic reasonsAnd that includes pushing the Americans out. Then the question you have to ask yourself is what the Americans going to doI just told you what the Americans are going to do. We do not tolerate peer competitorswe've got four good examples that shows you how in the past we have reacted andWhat you see happening now at the Trump administration is what you're going to see for many years to comeThe United States is going to get right in their face and it's gonna say you're not gonna dominateAsia you're not going to become a regional hegemon. It is unacceptable to usand of course many ofChina's neighbors. All you have to do is go to Japan South Korea I believe AustraliaTaiwan SingaporeIndiaRight. They do not want to seeChina become a regional hegemon, so it's not going to just be the Americans. It's gonna be the AmericansAlong with a balancing coalition of other countriesThat are going to try to contain ChinaAnd of course at the same time the Chinese are going to try to expand so what you'regetting now and you're going to get much more of andIt's a tragedy here as Tom told you the title of my book is the tragedy of great power politicsThis is a tragic situation. I'm not happy about this fact. I hope I'm proved wrongBut what we have here is a situationwhere two guerillasthe Chinese and the Americans are going to go head-to-head andIn an intense security competition and there is going to be a serious chanceThat they end up shooting at each other and that you have a real war between themI'm not saying that's likely I'm just saying that is a serious possibilityJust want to make one more point about thisThis is concept in the international politics called the security dilemma and the security dilemma is going to make this situation allThat much worseWhat exactly is the security dilemma the security dilemma says that anything that one side does?for defensive purposesto defend itself isInvariably seen by the other side is offensive in natureYou know, there's all this talk in the wake of Secretary of State Pompeo being here about putting missiles inplaces like Australia Guam's South Korea and JapanThese are these intermediate-range ballistic missiles and cruise missilesthe Chinese sayChinese have lots of these missiles by the wayThe Chinese say our missiles are defensive missiles your missiles or offensive missileswe of course thinkExactly the opposite their missiles are offensive weapons. And what we're doing is for defensive purposesSo what happens in this situation is you get this arms race going and of courseyou can see the arms race happening already pivot to Asia, right you get this arms race going andThe end result. Is that everything the Chinese do?todefend themselvesWe see is evidence that they're offensively oriented and vice versa and this just exacerbates the situationSo there's big trouble aheadnow, let me just say a few words about Australia asYou all know better than I do this really?creates anextremely difficultsituation for Australia because it depends so heavily onEconomic intercourse with China and of course at the same timeit depends on the United States for its security soAustralians have a sense that they're sort of caught in betweenthe United States and Chinaand by the wayIf you go to South Korea you go to Japan and you go to other countriesSingapore the Philippines they all feel the same way. So this is not unique to AustraliaSo the question is what is likely to happen in the future?My view on this is that the Australians have no choice but to side with the AmericansThis is not to say that Australia will stop all trade with ChinaBecause I don't believe that will happen but I do believe that the Australians will have no choice but down the roadTo balance quite clearly with the Americans because my bottom lineWhich should be clear from my argument here. Is that security concerns always?oralways TrumpProsperity or economic concerns survival is the highest goalAny state can have security matters the most so I think from Australia's point of view. It makes eminently good sense toAlly with the United States and I believe Australia will do thatJapan will do that and so forth and so on all this is not to deny that this is not a happy storyAnd again, it's a tragic story in many ways. Let me just conclude with one final commentand that is to say what you should all really hope for is thatChina does not continue to grow. Thank you\n"
