By Vasilis Trigkas
Chinese scholars are debating whether Beijing should abandon its non-alignment policy. But it may have already done so.
External balancing or alliance formation has been one of the pillars of realpolitik in interstate politics going back to Thucydides’ declaration that alliance formation was a leading indicator for the forthcoming war between Athens and Sparta in Classical Greece.
Recently the United States has intensified its external balancing behavior by reengaging with old friends in Asia-Pacific (Philippines, Japan, Korea) and looking to make new ones (Myanmar, India, Vietnam). The U.S. has sought to solidify its triangular alliance with Tokyo and Seoul while some strategic analysts and generals have even called for an Asiatic version of NATO as a strategic response to China’s increasing assertiveness.
Omnipotence post-WWII and post-Cold War, along with the ideological and pragmatic preeminence of the “liberal global order,” have endowed the United States with a global network of political and military alliances. It is in striking contrast with the recovering yet lonely “diva” like China.
Historically, before the concept of nations, China was an economic and military, soft and hard power center for eastern Asia. Whether seeking trade or in need of protection, countries gravitated towards China as part of the tributary system. Yet today China is a lonely power with a single ally: North Korea. After the original world revolutionary zeal of the 1950s and 60s and the alliance of necessity with Stalin’s Soviet Union, Beijing has followed a non-aligned trajectory, with strategic non-binding engagement on an ad hoc basis only, first with the U.S. against the Soviet Union and lately with Russia against the Western interventions or Pakistan against India.
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