John Mearsheimer vs Jeffrey Sachs debate

[zazen]

On 9/20/2024 at 10:08 AM, Leo Gura said:

Sachs is right, Mearsheimer is wrong.

There is no need to contain China. American hegemony is the problem, not the solution.

It's so obvious that America's biggest enemy is itself.

The whole paradigm of containment is problematic. The US only seeks to develop the world up to the point they can benefit from, but not to the point it challenges their hegemony. China, Russia and co go to war out of necessity, the West goes to war looking for the next one... and even its utmost prominent analyst Mearsheimer who claims to be a scholar of realpolitik, can't come to terms with the reality that China's growth poses no existential threat that needs containing, but rather engaging with.

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, zazen said:

can't come to terms with the reality that China's growth poses no existential threat that needs containing

China does engage in some disturbing and problematic things, like indoctrinating their own children to hate the West. China might need containing at some point if it spirals out of control. But overall no one is going to attack America so America needs to chill out.

Edited October 1 by Leo Gura

[zazen]

52 minutes ago, zazen said:

Often I write, as I think others do too, from the lens of international politics and justice (idealist - Sachs) because thats the cultural marinade of liberalism we're all swimming in. It's the liberal order we're trying to (and told to) build. It defers to justice before peace, rather than the game of power politics human nature finds it far too easy to default to (realist - Mearshimer).

We created psycho-political frameworks of laws and institutions so that we don't have to use the might makes right way of doing things which is often bloody and brutal. We went from managing our societies through raw physicality to refined psychology - doesn't the notion of us being civilised rest upon this shift? From raw to refined, from physical brawn to the psychological use of our brains to affect change and peacefully transfer positions of power.

Westerners celebrate the idea that their relatively peaceful and stable societies are the result of democracy and human rights. Western countries aren't only more peaceful and prosperous due to democracy (or the perception of it) but due to anti-democratic practices abroad.  The prosperity and peace they enjoy within their borders is underpinned by maintaining a inherently anti-democratic, hegemonic order beyond their borders.

The West speaks of principles but acts with power, to them power is the principle though they speak in opposing terms. The attitude is that peace and prosperity is attained through the existence of or imposition of power - even if it delays justice and prolongs current injustice. Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum - If You Want Peace, Prepare For War. The existence of power acts as a deterrence, which brings about peace so long as that power isn't abused or challenged.

Justice before peace is how we hope the world could work, grounded in law and principles (Sachs). The imposition of peace by positions of power is grounded in power dynamics and pragmatism and often how the world does work (Mearsheimer).

The world works on a spectrum between the two - between power and principle. We dance between the aspirational values our society claims to cherish but that our political class and state fails to embody - and who often default to what is already embodied in our base human nature which is raw power and survival. This causes a collective cognitive dissonance and a visible hypocrisy.

It's this hypocrisy of calling oneself civilised whilst the other barbaric and primitive that rubs a lot of the Global South the wrong way. The hypocrite stands on a pedestal of their own making, pontificating about virtues they fail to embody and casting others as evil, for sins they themselves commit and attempt to conceal through propaganda and linguistic gymnastics.

This lack of integrity, and gap between actions and words or between rhetoric and reality is what erodes the trust needed in a multipolar world. This is why the world is bifurcating between the East and West, and parallel systems (BRICS) are being built which the West now bemoans. The next decades will be heavily predicated along these lines.

Edited October 1 by zazen

[zazen]

Interesting tweet on China: https://x.com/rnaudbertrand/status/1841329313427460347?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ

This translated discussion (link at bottom) between two of China's top international relations scholars - Zhang Yunling and Tang Shiping - is really interesting.

It illustrates just how profoundly different Chinese thoughts on foreign affairs are, and how much more sophisticated they are than what we're used to hearing in the West.

First of all, small bio:
- Zhang Yunling is the Director of the Institute of International Studies at Shandong University (next to the birthplace of Confucius) and a Member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China's most prestigious institution for social sciences. 
- Tang Shiping is a distinguished professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs of Fudan University, Shanghai's top university. He's on Twitter by the way: @ShipingTang

A summary of some of the more interesting points:

External constraints are helpful for China
Zhang Yunling says that "external constraints—as long as they do not lead to confrontation or attempts to destroy China—are actually helpful for our country".

Which at first glance is completely counter-intuitive: if you listen to Western international relations scholars like Mearsheimer, a country's foremost objective should be to have as little constraint as possible. 

So how does it make sense? Zhang explains that "all major powers have a tendency towards self-centredness and hegemony. [On account of] today's challenging international landscape, maintaining hegemony involves enormous costs." So in effect he believes that external constraints help check these natural impulses to be self-centered - aka hubristic and not listening to the world - and/or hegemonic, which he says "involves enormous costs", meaning it is not sustainable or beneficial for China (or any other power).

Zhang further emphasizes that this view is based on his "basic judgment" that "in today's world, no country has the ability to invade China anymore." Which means that external constraints shouldn't be too worrying as they effectively aren't existential.

One way to view it is like in a competition between companies. A company that's unconstrained, with no competition, will become a fat complacent monopoly and in the long run this sows the seeds of its eventual demise.

Against black and white thinking
This is typically the one thing that we in the West have the hardest time with in Chinese thought, because it comes so naturally to us to think in absolutes, to see something as either "good" or "bad" and someone as either "with us" or "against us", which always necessarily leads us towards confrontation. This way of thinking is however almost completely absent from Chinese thought, they simply do not think like this.

This is reflected in the discussion here. For instance Zhang argues that in reaction to the U.S. forcing countries to take side, China shouldn't start doing so in turn but instead opt for the concept of “choosing projects, not sides” [选项不选边]. And in case some countries do choose to side with the U.S. the concept with them should be “choosing sides but still choosing projects” [选边亦选项] whereby "these countries may have to side with the US on certain issues, but this does not mean they will completely refuse to cooperate with China." As Zhang explains, the overall objective of all this is to "create a flexible space for coexistence" as opposed to "be swayed by our emotions" and "define relationships based on the choice of sides".

Similarly for China's periphery they speak of the concept of "my neighbours and I", meaning that "China and its neighbours jointly create a region of coexistence, with the goal of achieving coexistence and coprosperity". This is in stark contrast with, for instance, the US's Monroe doctrine of establishing a "backyard" through brute force. As Zhang explains, China's approach purposefully establishes no hierarchy between countries, prioritizes dialogue and negotiations "instead of traditional military force", considers others' interests, all with coexistence and mutual prosperity as ultimate objectives. Also, they have a concept of "close but not intimate" [近而不亲], meaning that they purposefully seek to maintain certain distances or boundaries with their neighbors in order to avoid situations of dependence and to uphold the concept of China not imposing sides.

Some will immediately say "but the South China Sea" or "but the Philippines", but looking at the bigger picture it's absolutely undeniable that all in all China's neighbours have become prosperous thanks to China's rise. For instance it's incredible to think that ASEAN's economy added more to global economic growth between 2000 and 2020 than did the whole of the EU! And a big part of the reason is because China-ASEAN trade exploded from $40 billion in 2000 to $975 billion in 2022. It's also undeniable that despite skirmishes here and there, peaceful coexistence is a fact: there have been no wars in the region in over 4 decades and it's undeniable that countries in the region aren't forced by China to choose sides. On the contrary, countries that are involved in these skirmishes like the Philippines are those that - quite the coincidence - unequivocally chose to vassalize themselves to the U.S... 

All in all, this shows that China doesn't see the world in binary terms but rather seeks the emergence of self-reinforcing mutually beneficial system with its neighbors and the world. Which is less costly for China (in terms of military, paying off vassals, etc.) and in the end more beneficial: if your neighbors thrive, if the world thrives, you also benefit in multitude of ways. At the end of the day it's a more sustainable and flexible approach than a Monroe doctrine imperialist approach with all the negative consequences we witness today.

On the new world order
They say that "China does not seek to replace or defeat the United States" but still "hopes to change the world", in particular by "giving more space to developing countries and creating opportunities for shared participation in and distribution of global wealth".

For this Zhang proposes the idea of “building temples, renovating temples, but not demolishing temples”. He defines it as such: "China can establish new systems [i.e. economic, regulatory, political etc.]. If you are able to, go ahead and build them, [but] your ideas must be widely accepted. This is not about forming alliances or drawing together military cliques; rather it is more about reflecting China's economic interests. 'Renovating temples' means supplementing existing systems. 'Not demolishing temples' means being a builder, not a destroyer."

They also differentiates the notion of "responsible major power" as opposed to the U.S. which they see as a "destructive power". More concretely, they argue that a "responsible major power" has three roles: "defender [捍卫者], contributor [贡献者] and builder [建设者]" which is to be contrasted from "the traditional path of hegemonic expansion". This is in the context of them believing that in the new world order "power will shift from being overly concentrated to being more dispersed", so China sees itself as playing a crucial role in shaping a more balanced global system that better represents the interests of non-Western and developing countries, while still working within and improving upon existing international frameworks rather than overturning them entirely.

Overall conclusion: This discussion reveals a level of strategic depth in Chinese foreign policy thinking that often goes unrecognized in the West, and one that's also more and more absent in Western thinking. What's particularly striking is the emphasis on sustainable, long-term strategies that see the world holistically as opposed to a sum of parts. By advocating for a "flexible space for coexistence" and rejecting the binary thinking that often dominates Western approaches, it shows that China is simply playing a different game altogether. We're very, very away from the halfwitted neocon thinking we've been too used to...

Ultimately, this discussion underscores the need for Western policymakers and scholars to engage more deeply with Chinese strategic thinking. If only to understand what China actually seeks instead of our usual habit of assuming they think like us, but also because it offers fascinating ways of redefining how international relations could potentially work.