Concluding onversation with Thomas P.M. Barnett, one of the leading defense intellectuals in the United States and author of ‘The Pentagon’s New Map,’ about the possibility of a US-China alliance.
TIME: Now there are a lot of Americans who will object I think to your analogy of the US as the UK in the early part of the 20th century, and China as the rising power, ie the US a century ago. You argue that we should play the role that Great Britain did and try to manage China’s rise toward being a responsible power. First, do you really think China will supplant the US as the world’s leading power?
Barnett: No, at least not for quite awhile. China’s rise is not the same as our decline. A key difference between us and Great Britain is that the U.K. had to fight two wars in a generation against Germany, the rising power of the time. That had a lot to do with Britain’s decline. There is no inevitability to a similar US decline.
TIME: But some influential defense thinkers—outside the Pentagon I’m thinking of John Mearsheimer, the University of Chicago political scientist—seem to argue that there is something inevitable about conflict between the US and China, simply because China is rising, the US is number one, and there can’t be two number ones. And they use the rise of Germany in the early 20th century as a depressing analogy. Why are they wrong?
Barnett: Well, I’ll say again, there’s nothing inevitable about it, and smart people on both sides understand that. Look, I’ve had meetings with both young PLA officers in Beijing, as well as fifth generation politicians, and when I talk about this stuff, their eyes light up. When I talk about how the United States needs China, but that China also needs the United States, they understand it. The connectivity runs both ways, obviously in economics and trade, and I’m arguing it needs to be extended into the security realm. And this IS possible. The assumption—which is pretty widespread in some precincts in the Pentagon and among some US scholars– that leaders in Beijing assume that bad news for the US—like the bleeding we’re doing in Iraq, for example– is good news for China , well that’s just wrong.
Take energy and the situation in the middle east as an example. Ten years from now, China will import 70per cent of its oil from places that are unsafe or unstable ( primarily the middle east and Africa.) For the United States, who is equally if not more `dependent on foreign oil,’ that ratio is reversed. About 70 per cent of our oil is from relatively safe places. Now Beijing, 10 years from now is not going to be in any position to safeguard the Straits of Hormuz. There is no way they can access those situations militarily or politically. Guess who they (the unstable oil producers) have by the balls: China. Not the US. Beijing needs the US to remain engaged in the Middle East and elsewhere, and anything that saps the will of the US to do that– ie Iraq—is NOT good news for China. I repeat: these fifth generation guys get this. They understand that both sides need the other not just economically speaking but in terms of security as well, and they we have to work towards accomplishing that. [A military alliance]is not something that will happen overnight, but it is something that both sides should be thinking about.