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China’s Emancipatory Diplomacy for a Peaceful, Democratic, and Sustainable Global Community
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State power, in the modern era, is not just based on the concepts of political, military, and economic efficiency. The rise of globalization and interdependence of states, in the international system, have led to the centralization of a new concept known as "soft power". The concept was primarily developed by Professor Joseph Nye, and the West rationally employed it as a political approach to establish their liberal hegemony. Recently, China has made significant efforts to enhance its soft power capabilities. To analyze China's soft power, this research study primarily adopted a qualitative research approach to examine non-Western aspects of China's soft power, including cultural diplomacy, Educational Resources, financial influence, and global governance initiatives, with specific attention giving to the Belt and Road Initiative. The findings demonstrate that China's soft power strategy incorporates both conventional aspects, such as, Confucian values and cultural exchange, as well as modern tools like the neo-Confucian idea of a "harmonious society and the attraction of economic and media influence. China's diplomatic efforts and economic strength have contributed to its expanding influence in the developing world and challenging Western dominance. The study examines China's soft power strategy and compares it to Western soft power to highlight its unique characteristics. Moreover, the study aims to assess whether China presents a new interpretation of "soft power" and how it effectively utilizes its resources to accomplish its objectives.
China, which has made a major economic breakthrough, has become one of the most important actors in international politics by increasing its military power in recent years. China's increasing power and influence in the international arena arouses increasing curiosity about the country's foreign policy. With Xi Jinping becoming president, China began to display a more assertive attitude or behavior on many issues. This study basically seeks an answer to the question of what differences Xi Jinping brought to Chinese foreign policy. What kind of changes do these differences lead to in Chinese foreign policy? In this study, the general tendencies and directions of Chinese foreign policy during the Xi Jinping period are discussed. The assertive foreign policy approach that Xi Jinping is trying to implement is analyzed. In this context, the visions of "Chinese dream", "new type of great power relations", "new type of international relations", “Belt and Road Initiative" and "a community with a common future for humanity", which reflect Xi's assertive foreign policy approach, are examined. At the same time, challenges to the assertive foreign policy implemented under Xi Jinping are discussed. The study mainly questions the extent to which Xi Jinping's assertive foreign policy approach is successful. The study concludes that Xi Jinping's active foreign policy approach has not increased China's sphere of influence in the international arena to the extent expected. As China becomes more visible in the international arena, the country's foreign policy challenges seem to be increasing.
Middle East is one of the critical regions in global politics and diplomacy. The economic development of this region has attracted the attention of superpowers, especially the US, to have its influence in these countries by establishing military and economic connections. The US enjoyed enormous influence in this region with no competition. China is exponentially expanding its economic might and may surpass the US in a few years in terms of the world’s biggest economy. China has also stepped into diplomatic fronts and established cordial ties with the Middle Eastern nations, mainly due to its economic projects. Recently, China brokered a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which has led to the restoration of diplomatic relations between both arch-rivals of the Middle East. This has been a significant breakthrough in the politics of the Middle East and significantly boosted China’s diplomatic presence in the region. This research examines the Chinese involvement in the Middle East, its economic and diplomatic initiatives, and how China has enabled itself to emerge as a peacemaker in the region. This research also sheds light on the evolving dynamics of Middle East politics and its consequences on the interests of the US.
This study investigates the evolution of China's diplomacy, specifically its transition from a peaceful and low-profile approach to the assertive and confrontational wolf warrior style, and its implications for international relations, regional politics, and global governance. With China's growing influence on the global stage, understanding the dynamics of its diplomatic strategy is crucial for navigating the complexities of contemporary international relations. The paper examines the underlying motivations for adopting the wolf warrior approach, using three case studies during the COVID-19 pandemic: the Twitter spat between Zhao Lijian and the U.S. State Department, the diplomatic conflict between China and Australia, and the confrontation between China and Sweden. These incidents provide valuable insights into the various dimensions of China's wolf warrior diplomacy, including its assertive rhetoric, challenge to traditional diplomatic norms, and the leveraging of economic power for political ends.
This article concentrates on four Chinese blockbuster movies, Wolf Warrior (2015), Operation Mekong (2016), Wolf Warrior 2 (2017) and Operation Red Sea (2018), referring to them collectively as the “wolf warrior cycle” on the basis of their shared themes of China's overseas military actions. To understand why films addressing this topic have emerged since the mid-2010s, the article employs a critical political economy approach and situates the wolf warrior cycle in China's transforming foreign policies. It argues that the Belt and Road Initiative, one of the state's prominent foreign policies and global strategies in this period, played a crucial role in shaping the production of the wolf warrior cycle films under a trend of the politicization of commercial blockbusters in the Chinese film industry. In turn, these films contributed to the formation of the “wolf warrior diplomacy” image by reinforcing the proactiveness of China's diplomacy and nationalistic stereotypes in Chinese society towards international relations.
Xi Jinping’s political authority was not preeminent among cadres of the Communist Party of China when he assumed the General Secretary of the Central Committee in November 2012. After his inauguration, Xi advocated a slogan of “Chinese Dream” for realizing the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” and pursued the policies for expanding the “core interests,” which appealed to growing nationalism among the party and the society, resulting in enhancing their support to Xi. China’s assertive behavior to claim territorial sovereignty and maritime interests in the East and South China Seas caused tension with the regional countries, but Xi took advantage of the conflictive relations with neighbors to strengthen his leadership in the Chinese politics. Xi administration achieved the integration of four maritime law enforcement agencies into the China Coast Guard and the establishment of the Central National Security Commission, which needed to overcome persistent opposition within the party. Xi also launched “Major Country Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics” as a new direction of Chinese foreign policies, seeking for greater leadership of China as a major power in the international community, which helped Xi to consolidate political authority. Xi cleverly employed assertive diplomacy to raise his authority in the Chinese politics.
‘Community of common destiny’, a new concept in China's diplomacy, has been increasingly used by the Chinese government, especially President Xi Jinping, on international occasions. Given the paucity of academic research on the concept, this paper aims to fill the gap and examine three aspects: meaning, motives and implications. Building upon the author's long observation of China's foreign policy, the paper argues that this concept of ‘community of common destiny’ is vague in meaning and loosely used by China. While initially proposed by China to mend ties with neighbouring states in the context of escalating territorial disputes, the concept constitutes part of China's long‐term strategy to maintain a peaceful ‘period of strategic opportunity’ in the first two to three decades of the 21st century to further develop itself. However, the ambiguity of the concept poses a main challenge for China to promote the acceptance of this concept by the developing world, let alone developed countries. This process demands more transparency, commitment and concrete actions from China.
Diplomacy is concomitant with humanity's highest hopes and deepest frustrations. Complex global problems demand—but might not receive—deep understanding, skilled advocacy, and sustained negotiation and innovation. Diplomatic method, this article argues, emerges by combining advocacy and reflexivity, and in modernity as dialectic between statecraft and humanism. Statecraft is currently dominant, but humanist aspirations remain pertinent, if often repressed. By examining the issue of diplomatic knowledge in functional and historical contexts—and crucially by looking at it beyond information and intelligence gathering—the article examines how humanism becomes a usable praxis in diplomacy. Specifically, how humanist praxis aspires to provoke thinking and encourage the production of knowledge that can bring about changes in diplomatic perspective and policy. Practitioners can thus connect to diplomacy not merely as passive servants of policy but as active humans pursuing more than restricted technical goals. This enhances not simply a top‐down, policy implementation practice, but a bottom‐up diplomacy from different places, utilizing the increasingly globalized “new common knowledge” to share insights, define action, and support diverse initiatives. The humanist legacy, in short, highlights diplomacy as a knowledge practice, pursuing a range of national, cross‐national, and postnational goals, negotiating interests but also social meaning and identity, something that encourages its revisiting as a mode of living.
This article addresses Chinas multilateral diplomacy by identifying four distinct strategies: watching, engaging, circumventing, and shaping. The typology builds on two literatures: power transition theory, and the more recent “assertiveness” discourse in the West. Drawing from a range of cases in both the economic and security domains, the article argues that China’s multilateralism is diverse, and that it cannot be un-problematically characterized as either status-quo or revisionist in nature. However, the general trend appears to be towards engagement, but with an assertive tact as China’s interests become further entangled in the business of international institutions.
China's rise and its importance to international relations as a discipline-defining phenomenon is well recognized. Yet when scholars analyze China's foreign relations, they typically focus on Beijing's military power, economic might, or political leaders. As a result, most traditional assessments miss a crucial factor: China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). In China's Rising Foreign Ministry, Dylan M.H Loh upends conventional understandings of Chinese diplomacy by underlining the importance of the ministry and its diplomats in contemporary Chinese foreign policy. Loh explains how MOFA gradually became the main interface of China's foreign policy and the primary vehicle through which the idea of 'China' is produced, articulated, and represented on the world stage. This theoretically innovative and ambitious book offers an original reading of Chinese foreign policy, with wide-ranging implications for international relations. By shedding light on the dynamics of Chinese diplomacy and how assertiveness is constructed, Loh provides readers with a comprehensive re-appraisal of China's foreign ministry and the role it performs in China's re-emergence.
The authors of this study aim to highlight the features of the formation of Chinese diplomacy and the formation of China’s foreign policy in modern times. The authors analyze three periods of the formation of the diplomacy of the People’s Republic of China - “diplomacy of peaceful liberation” (1921-1949), “diplomacy of peaceful coexistence” (1949-1979) and “diplomacy of peaceful development” (from 1979 to our time). The conclusions reached by the authors indicate that China’s diplomacy developed in a unique way and undoubtedly reflected the historical changes that took place with the state. All three stages have had an important impact on the formation of Chinese diplomacy, bringing their own nuances to the modern diversity. Thus, among the most important areas can be distinguished - economic diplomacy, multilateral diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, cooperation and protection of the main national interests, that is, the foundations that emerged due to the historical transformation of the state. According to the authors, solving problems and improving the country’s image will remain an important characteristic of Chinese diplomacy, especially in its relations with other major powers. In cooperation with other major powers, China is likely to be more active in solving fundamental global problems at the strategic level. China does not seek to change the international system, rather, it intends to be a responsible participant in world affairs. As China’s identity becomes more global and regional, the current concept of multilateralism in China’s overall diplomatic strategy may be revised to realize national interests, resolve complex issues and ensure governance in an era of instability and turbulence.
China’s SREB is a geo-strategic program that has been initiated based on Beijing’s judgment on its international and domestic environment. Building the SREB program servers the China grand strategy and satisfies the national demands. The Chinese government declared the ‘community with a shared future for Mankind’ is a national grand strategy and the guiding slogan of its foreign policy. This article interprets China’s governmental discourse on the guiding slogan and Chinese academic efforts to justify the grand strategy. From the Chinese perspective, the construction of the SREB needs to adopt omnidirectional diplomacy, which includes dealing with its relations with great powers, with neighboring nations, and building regional regimes and mechanisms. China’s grand strategy and three approaches sound ideal to some extent, but they demonstrate Chinese real concerns and ideas. In the long-term future, Russia will become more and more significant for China’s SREB program and the grand strategy as a whole.
Relationships embody and define the mutual expectations and obligations that are the bedrock of international relations. These expectations and obligations guide any state’s interactions with another. As the international system returns to complexity, nations find themselves cooperating with each other in some dimensions (e.g., economic, technological, political, military) even as they compete in others. The artless vocabulary of the Cold War cannot describe the complexities of a world in which broad mutual commitments (“alliances”) are ever rarer and contingent commitments (“ententes”) and ad hoc coalitions are increasingly the norm. Cold War-derived terminology impedes rather than facilitates reasoning about a world in which relationships express and justify unilateral strategic protection, the provision or withholding of favors, or purely transaction-based interactions between states. It cannot distinguish between different forms of competition (e.g., rivalry, adversarial antagonism, enmity) that span the spectrum between peace and war. Diplomacy requires a taxonomy of international relations that analyzes and guides national management of the multidimensional, multipolar world orders now upon us. This chapter develops and proposes such a taxonomy.
The institution of the Chinese MFA spokesperson system is used as an example to showcase the evolution and challenges of diplomacy in a globalizing world. While the answers given and the news released by the MFA spokesperson at regular press conference are the official views on China’s foreign policy and diplomacy, the cases that MFA spokesperson’s failure to offer answer to questions from the media have been on the rise. Content analysis of the transcripts of Chinese MFA spokesperson’s answers at its regular press conference reveals the challenges to the Chinese MFA mainly come from such fields as economic affairs, military affairs, DPRK-related affairs, consular affairs, summit diplomacy, and so on. The challenges facing the Chinese MFA share features in common with its counterparts around the globe, but the measures taken by the Chinese government to address them demonstrate more “Chinese characteristics,” that is, enhancing the Chinese Communist Party’s centralized, unified, and absolute leadership over China’s diplomacy.
In most of the scholarship on diplomacy, whether historical or contemporary, the governmental elite-based perspective has consistently dominated. The societisation of diplomacy is the process of legitimisation of foreign policy deliberations between state and society, both domestically and internationally. This article argues that there are two types of societisation: internal and external. It defines the former as a dynamic political communication process comprising diplomatic policy deliberation and legitimisation between state and society in a domestic context. The internal dimension is yet to receive sufficient academic and practical attention. This article fills the gap in the literature on the internal societisation of diplomacy through an empirical case study of Japan’s diplomacy towards China. It shows that the unsuccessful internal societisation of diplomacy has had moderating effects on Japan’s diplomacy towards China.
What motivates states to act the way they do? This book focuses on a particular kind of motivation inclining a state to challenge the existing norms, rules, and institutions of international order. Specifically, it addresses the concept of revisionism, which has loomed large in international relations narratives but has remained largely understudied until recently. The authors offer a critique of the existing discourse on revisionism and investigate the historical origin and evolution of the foreign policy orientations of revisionist states in the past. They moreover introduce an ensemble of indicators to discern and compare the extent of revisionist tendencies on the part of contemporary China and the United States. Questioning the facile assumption that past episodes will repeat in the future, they argue that “hard” revisionism relying on war and conquest is less viable and likely in today’s world. Instead, “soft” revisionism seeking to promote institutional change is more relevant and likely. They attend especially to contemporary Sino-American relations and conclude that much of the current discourse based on power-transition theory is problematic. Contrary to this theory, a dominant power is not inevitably committed to the defense of international order, nor does a rising power usually have a revisionist agenda to challenge this order. The transformation of international order does not necessarily require a power transition between China and the United States, nor does a possible power transition between these two countries necessarily augur war.
This book takes an in-depth look at China’s diplomacy in the New Era under the leadership of Xi Jinping. It begins with the analysis of China’s rise and world transformation, the connotations of China’s New Era and its new world ideal as “Community of Shared Future for Mankind” and then presents Xi Jinping’s grand strategy by analyzing his new ideas on the governance of China and global governance, theory and practice of China’s diplomacy in the New Era. Key concepts and innovation cases in China's diplomacy around security, BRI, opening-up strategy, and its strategic approach to the USA are introduced as well, which builds an overview of China's diplomacy.
This article addresses the question of whether the emerging role of cities in diplomacy is a reflection of the diplomatic transformation in China, and what the distinctive features are of the diplomatic roles of cities within China’s context. It argues that city diplomacy in China falls between club diplomacy and network diplomacy by exploring five aspects: the number of players, structures, forms, transparency and main purposes. Cities have developed their representation by serving as important agents in managing domestic and international situations, developed their communication channels by contributing in shaping China’s neighbouring diplomacy and global partnerships, and developed their negotiation techniques by participating in reform of global governance system. The article concludes that the diplomatic role of cities in China is to consolidate the social foundation of relations between nations, promote the establishment of a new type of international relations, and promote a community of a shared future for mankind.
Recent years have seen China trying to play the role of a responsible power. It has made great efforts in this regard, including actively participating in international peacekeeping operations, collaborating with other countries to deal with the climate change and trying to help in fighting the COVID -19 pandemic. However, China’s efforts have met with stiff resistance from the West, especially from the Donald Trump-led United States. How does one explain this turn of events? This essay argues that the speed of China’s rise; the Western perception of China’s domestic development; the failure to address domestic problems on the part of some major Western countries, especially the United States; and the role that the Trump administration played provide important clues to such a development.
Discursive power is the reflection of a country’s national strength and international influence. The increase of economic power does not necessarily mean the increase of discursive power. The improvement of discursive power has to be strategically designed and multidimensionally improved. Due to China’s historical experiences regarding discursive power, China is weak in many fields. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China began to pay more attention to improve its international discursive power such as expanding its discursive presence and strengthening effectiveness of its voice, changing language style, enhancing institutional power and innovating diplomatic practice. In the future, more substantive efforts will be needed such as strengthening the overall strategic layout, enhancing institutional discursive power in various fields, improving the discursive system and promoting integration of China’s major diplomatic ideas and discourse with global ones.
Scholarship on what constitutes the major characteristics of China’s diplomacy lacks consensus. This essay argues that many of what have been considered the distinct features of China’s diplomacy are the common features of all diplomacy, rather than specifically those of China’s diplomacy. These distinctive characteristics can be understood from historical and cross-national comparisons, and include strong self-consciousness of and emphasis on its distinction, the declining significance of diplomacy accompanied by the rise of power, the unified leadership of the the Chinese Communist Party, remarkable cultural features and the Chinese leadership’s personal style.
Chinese diplomatic style is the product of many influences. It is rooted in 2,000 years of history but also reflects changes resulting from the Chinese Revolution and the dramatic expansion of its wealth, power, status and interests ongoing today. Much is made of the hierarchical tradition in China’s diplomatic thinking and its resistance to Western diplomatic norms. However, these provide unreliable guides for contemporary Chinese diplomacy. While ‘face’, in terms of the respect of others remains an important consideration, Chinese diplomacy is influenced by upholding its understanding of the principles of sovereignty, non-intervention and self-determination. It is also influenced by the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s conceptions of how political leadership and control are exercised and maintained. These concerns manifest themselves in the way Chinese diplomatic style has avoided force, favoured ambiguity and operated with a clear, but creatively interpreted, distinction between non-negotiable core principles and more flexible concrete arrangements.
China’s diplomacy has undergone a sea of changes under Xi Jinping’s rein. But there is no consensus on the nature, scope, essence and direction of these changes. This article aims to explore both the changes and continuities in Chinese foreign affairs under the Xi Jinping leadership through the lens of his recently much-advocated formulation of ‘major country diplomacy with distinctive Chinese features’. Tracing the evolution, manifestation and causes of Xi’s ‘major country diplomacy’, it is argued that Xi’s diplomacy is a clear departure from Deng Xiaoping’s TGYH ([Tao Guang Yang Hui] low profile) strategy and therefore transformative in nature. On the other hand, however, his strong adherence to the core realist assumptions about national security issues makes his idealistic and liberal global vision and his efforts to transcend ‘the traditional Western theories of international relations’ more difficult to accomplish. In this respect, the glass is still half full and half empty.
China’s foreign policy is acquiring a growing multilateral dimension. This development is in line with a booming discourse of international responsibility in China. This chapter intends to clarify the general understanding in China about its international responsibilities, with regard to its foreign policy. It will then explore how China’s growing responsibility diplomacy injected new dynamics in China’s multilateral diplomacy, transforming it from pragmatic multilateralism towards a strategic one. China has not only actively engaged in the existing multilateral institutions, but also co-initiated a number of new multilateral institutions, mostly in Asia. At the same time, challenges also arise in its management of this new multilateral responsibility diplomacy, particularly in its efforts to seek a proper balance between the responsibility diplomacy and traditional diplomatic principles, its national interests, capacity and external expectations.
Classics of International Relations introduces, contextualises and assesses 24 of the most important works on international relations of the last 100 years. Providing an indispensable guide for all students of IR theory, from advanced undergraduates to academic specialists, it asks why are these works considered classics? Is their status deserved? Will it endure? It takes as its starting point Norman Angell’s best-selling The Great Illusion (1909) and concludes with Daniel Deudney’s award winning Bounding Power (2006). The volume does not ignore established classics such as Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations and Waltz’s Theory of International Politics, but seeks to expand the ‘IR canon’ beyond its core realist and liberal texts. It thus considers emerging classics such as Linklater’s critical sociology of moral boundaries, Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations, and Enloe’s pioneering gender analysis, Bananas, Beaches and Bases. It also innovatively considers certain ‘alternative format’ classics such as Kubrick’s satire on the nuclear arms race, Dr Strangelove, and Errol Morris’s powerful documentary on war and US foreign policy, The Fog of War. With an international cast of contributors, many of them leading authorities on their subject, Classics of International Relations will become a standard reference for all those wishing to make sense of a rapidly developing and diversifying field.
Randall L. Schweller is a John M. Olin Post-Doctoral Fellow in National Security at the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. In August 1994 he will join the faculty of the Department of Political Science at The Ohio State University.
The author is grateful to Richard Betts, Marc Busch, Thomas Christensen, Dale Copeland, Michael Desch, Richard Herrmann, Robert Jervis, Ethan Kapstein, James McAllister, Gideon Rose, David Schweller, Jack Snyder, Kimberly Marten Zisk, and the members of the Olin National Security Group at Harvard's CFIA for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay.
1. A leading proponent of the "balancing predominates" view, Kenneth N. Waltz, remarks: "In international politics, success leads to failure. The excessive accumulation of power by one state or coalition of states elicits the opposition of others." Waltz, "The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory," in Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb, eds., The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 49.
2. The bandwagoning image of international politics pictures the global order as a complex machine of wheels within wheels. In this highly interconnected world, small local disruptions quickly grow into large disturbances as their effects cascade and reverberate throughout the system. In contrast, the balancing image sees a world composed of many discrete, self-regulating balance-of-power systems. Because balancing is the prevailing tendency among states, prudent powers should limit their commitments to places where their core interests are at stake.
3. Jack Snyder, "Introduction," to Robert Jervis and Jack Snyder, eds., Dominoes and Bandwagons: Strategic Beliefs and Great Power Competition in the Eurasian Rimland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 3.
4. Quoted in Deborah Welch Larson, "Bandwagoning Images in American Foreign Policy: Myth or Reality?" in ibid., p. 95.
5. Quoted in J.H. Elliott, "Managing Decline: Olivares and the Grand Strategy of Imperial Spain," in Paul Kennedy, ed., Grand Strategies in War and Peace (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 97.
6. Quoted in Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict From 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987), p. 133. Napoleon often spoke in terms of bandwagoning dynamics. In 1794, he said: "It is necessary to overwhelm Germany; that done, Spain and Italy fall of themselves"; in 1797: "Let us concentrate all our activity on the side of the navy, and destroy England; this done, Europe is at our feet"; and in 1811, "In five years, I shall be the master of the world; there only remains Russia, but I shall crush it." Quoted in R.B. Mowat, The Diplomacy of Napoleon (New York: Russell & Russell, [1924] 1971), pp. 22, 53, 243. Not all French strategists of the period viewed the world in these terms, however. After his remarkable victory over the First Coalition in 1794, Carnot feared that France might become drunk with victory: "The rapidity of our military successes . . . do not permit us to doubt that we could . . . reunite to France all the ancient territory of the Gauls. But however seductive this system may be, it will be found perhaps that it is wise to renounce it, and that France would only enfeeble herself and prepare an interminable war by aggrandizement of this kind." Quoted in ibid., p. 11.
7. Adolf Hitler in a speech to Gauleiters on May 8, 1943. Quoted in J. Noakes and G. Pridham, eds., Nazism, 1919-1945: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, Vol. II: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination (New York: Schocken Books, 1988), p. 857.
8. For his most comprehensive statement on the subject, see Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987).
9. See Robert G. Kaufman, "To Balance or to Bandwagon? Alignment Decisions in 1930s Europe," Security Studies, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Spring 1992), pp. 417-447; and Paul W. Schroeder, "Neo-Realist Theory and International History: An Historian's View," paper presented at the War and Peace Institute, Columbia University, June 11, 1993.
10. The domestic-sources school of alliance formation includes Deborah Welch Larson, Stephen R. David, and Jack S. Levy and Michael M. Barnett...
With the help of recently declassified documents, this article examines the link between triangular diplomacy and the Vietnam War. It argues that from the summer of 1971 to the conclusion of the Paris Agreements in January 1973 Kissinger tried to 'sell' a peace agreement to his Soviet and Chinese inter locutors by stressing the American willingness to accept a 'decent interval' solution: that is, the United States would not reenter the war provided that the collapse of the South Vietnamese goverment did not occur immediately after the last US ground troops returned home. While such a posture played a significant role in increasing Sino-Soviet pressure towards a negotiated settlement, Kissinger's policy also served to bolster the subsequent competition between Moscow and Beijing over influence in Indochina.
Lanxin Xiang has authored a most thoughtful and provocative contribution to current considerations on United States-China relations. As this key international relationship is once again in flux, there is no shortage of punditry and prediction about it. Xiang's is a particularly valuable voice, as he offers interesting and insightful historical parallels from a century ago - which he describes as the Edwardian Era (1901-1910), the period during which England wrestled with the rising power of Wilhelmine Germany. His principal thesis seems to be that London misunderstood Berlin then, as Washington misunderstands Beijing now. He argues that this strategic misunderstanding led the stronger, entrenched power to undertake unnecessary preemptive measures against the rising authoritarian power - which, in turn, provoked a disequilibrium in the international system as the entrenched hegemonic powers (England and America respectively) disrupted a functional balance or concert of powers by seeking absolute, rather than relative, global preponderance (hegemony). There are no doubt some diplomatic historians who might query the veracity of this argument in Britain's case a century ago, as there are undoubtedly experts on American foreign policy who would dispute that Washington under the Bush administration seeks total global dominance today. Yet, I find Xiang's argument essentially persuasive in many regards, and for much of the evidence he cites. There are also significant areas of his analysis with which I would not readily concur, but first allow me to echo where I think his analysis of the contemporary scene has merit.
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