By Van Jackson
Balancing is not as easy as it looks.
An international consensus is forming about Chinese assertiveness in its relations with Asian neighbors. Whether the frequency of its gray zone coercion or the intensity of the land reclamation activities that the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative documents so well, China is making it increasingly difficult to deny a revisionist thread in its foreign policy. Despite a growing acknowledgement around the region and in Washington that China is engaging in a clear pattern of creeping aggression, there are many barriers to states effectively balancing against China. This is a potential danger in its own right.
At the recent Asan Plenum held in Seoul—the “Davos of Korea”—Chinese friends put on display a diplomatic assertiveness commensurate with their assertiveness in disputed territories in the East and South China Seas. The Chinese reiterated the hollow claim that a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense battery in South Korea would pose a threat to China, cautioning the South Koreans against allowing its deployment. They repeated Xi Jinping’s call to end “Cold War era alliances,” and advocated the return to a multipolar Asia. And in one of my panels, they suggested that the U.S.-South Korea alliance should effectively be null and void except for the narrow purpose of defending against North Korea. That’s right, one state telling other states the type and nature of relationships that others should be allowed to have—if that’s not a sign of revisionism then I’m not sure what is, short of a Hitler-esque invasion of another country. Unfortunately, as many China watchers are all too aware, none of the rhetoric on display at the Asan Plenum was particularly new.
Balancing involves the accretion of power, whether through alliance formation or internal military capacity building, for the sake of forming a counterweight that enables defense against (and ideally induces restraint in) another power. It isn’t necessarily dangerous or risky. On the contrary, under conditions of strategic competition or when facing states with revisionist intentions, balancing is justice; it is how the system maintains equilibrium. The belief that balancing is risky or aggressive in its own right is based on an assumption that the states you’re balancing against are defensively oriented, security seeking states that more or less support the geopolitical status quo. This potentially describes many states—Australia, Singapore, and South Korea, for example; arguably others as well. This does not describe China, at least not on its current path.
In the face of growing Chinese assertiveness and growing military power, there is a growing balancing imperative, yet there are at least four major barriers to balancing.
Read the full story at The Diplomat