Tom Barnett blog post "China: 'I'm stepping out.'"
Makes perfect sense: China’s economic profile around the world skyrockets, but its military role lags way behind (primarily out of fear of scaring the U.S. into rivalry), so it backfills with diplomacy. It throws what it has in abundance at the problems it encounters: money and people. It encounters problems primarily as a result of its great weakness: a huge and burgeoning need for commodities and energy from outside sources....
We don’t handle Sudan because we’re too busy getting trapped in our “global war” in the Persian Gulf. So China will take a stab at it.
Again, get used to that dynamic.
Bush and Cheney have pursued a pattern of “exceptionalism” in our foreign policy, Economy points out, and the longer we do that the more we can expect China to do the same.
But just like in the ASAT test example, whenever China steps out, they tend to highlight the overlapping strategic interests we share (and, as with satellites, shared strategic burdens that we bear more than others).
Our goal in this stepping out process for China, which is inevitable and good if we shape it correctly, is to limit the damage and “debris” that inevitably follows their initial, clumsy attempts. Of course, China’s answer would be, “but our debris is far smaller than yours--on average!”
And looking at Afghanistan and Iraq, they’d be making a point not easily countered.
So yeah, get used to it.
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