WASHINGTON — America’s top military official, Admiral Mike Mullen, returns from China this week after a series of intensive talks. The visit—the first by a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in four years—ought to signify a continued warming in the on-again, off-again military relationship between the world’s sole superpower and Asia’s largest rising power. Yet it did little to reduce U.S. mistrust of China. Some observers might point to specific areas of contention, such as friction over Taiwan and the status of the South China Sea, as sources of enduring U.S. anxiety. But the underlying cause is China’s system of one-party rule.
An autocracy’s rise inevitably and predictably sows mistrust. Without an independent media capable of extracting information from government authorities, a credibility gap exists between stated objectives and actual intentions, which remain opaque. Moreover, autocracy limits opportunities to influence a rising power’s strategic behavior. Pervasive secrecy hinders outsiders from identifying and bolstering moderates among top-level decision-makers. With business and civil society groups relegated to the sidelines of foreign policy and interactions with external powers regulated, there are inherent limits to engaging domestic actors inside an authoritarian state.
Conversely, a democratic government functions as a source of reassurance as a new power rises. Democracy clarifies intentions: a free press guarantees that information about a state’s ambitions cannot remain secret for long. In addition, the combination of transparent governance and decentralized authority creates opportunities for outsiders to shape a rising power’s trajectory. Other states can locate and freely engage domestic actors who might influence the foreign policy of the ascendant state. Thus, democratic government mitigates the mistrust a new power’s rise would otherwise generate.
The transatlantic world can look to its own history for affirmation that regime type matters as nations rise and fall. At the turn of the twentieth century, Great Britain, then the transatlantic world’s dominant power, entered a period of relative decline as the United States and Germany burst onto the global scene. Although both of these emerging giants challenged Great Britain on diverse fronts, the level of mistrust they generated sharply differed.
Democratic government illuminated American intentions and enabled Great Britain to shape U.S. foreign policy from within by cultivating influential friends in the executive branch, Congress, and the business community. As the United States rose to power, the British anticipated their eclipse with relative equanimity.
Autocratic Germany, however, elicited a different reaction from Great Britain. With foreign policy determined behind closed doors by the Kaiser and his advisors, Germany’s naval buildup triggered an outpouring of British mistrust. The result was a maritime rivalry and, eventually, war.
The current leadership in Beijing would like to believe that past is not prologue; they hope that unlike other autocracies, China can rise and reassure. This is wishful thinking. Economic interdependence and references to “peaceful development” and “harmonious society” have failed to curb growing concerns about China’s intentions in Washington and Asian capitals. Europe, too, has begun to express new reservations about the direction of China’s rise.
Beijing needs to recognize that a lack of domestic political reform is becoming a strategic liability. Widespread mistrust of China’s ambitions will handicap its ability to take a leadership role in the international community. Put bluntly, there is no substitute for evidence of greater transparency and liberalism at home. Chinese leaders are right to argue that democracy overnight would prove vastly destabilizing, but gradually embracing rule of law and participatory government would reduce mistrust, while enabling China to address some of its internal problems more effectively.
For its part, Washington should keep in mind the limits of conventional confidence-building efforts. Military exchanges such as Admiral Mullen’s visit have an important purpose. They put in place a network of relationships that could prove important to successfully deescalating a military confrontation between Washington and Beijing. They will not, however, dispel the mistrust that overhangs the U.S.-China relationship.
While continuing to engage China militarily, the United States should emphasize that real reassurance requires domestic political reform at home. America’s partners in Europe should echo this message in their human rights dialogues with China. The West cannot force China to democratize, but working in concert, the United States and Europe can inform Beijing’s internal debates about political liberalization and thereby support gradual reform. Although periods of flux in the hierarchy of nations often end in war, China’s ascendance is not destined to culminate in conflict. The only way for China to rise and reassure, however, is to institute gradual political reforms at home.
Daniel M. Kliman is a Transatlantic Fellow for Asia at the German Marshal Fund of the United States.
Picture by Burns
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