The final and most important deterministic reasoning of Mearsheimer is that nations all think like the US and act like a mirror image of this country. In the last blog of Part III, I suggest that in general national ambition varies with national resources, so it is not reasonable to assume all nations would desire global hegemony, simply because not all nations possess the same offensive resources, a fact that Mearsheimer quickly acknowledged.
Country Specifics & National DNAs
There are two issues left open so far in the discussions. First of all, we cannot rely on, or stop short by, the general conclusions concerning all countries and expect them to fit squarely into the US and China. More specifics about the two countries are needed.
Mearsheimer started from making globally general reasonings and then pushed them down to the US and China. My approach is the same: I also begin from showing where he was off in his general reasoning in the first three blogs, and now in this blog why he was wrong, weak or unbalanced with China and the US.
The other important issue is not to tie national goals solely with national resources. It is sobering but insufficient and imbalanced. Doing so inevitably leads to the Mearsheimer conclusion that all nations have presumably the same hegemonial ambitions and desires — they only differ in resources and offensive capabilities. I would argue instead that nations have different preferences, to be dubbed “national DNAs,” that must be added to the equation for understanding national goals and choices.
Production Possibility Frontier & National DNA
Going from resources only to resources and preferences apparently makes the model of national goals more complicated. One reason is that the two may not be closely related such that certain level of resources always matches with certain set of preferences. If you look at countries in real world, they are all over the places in terms of resources and preferences. For some countries like Nepal, their national dominance ambitions do match their resources. For others like Iran and North Korea, we have seen a disproportionately high level of global aggressiveness despite a mediocre or low level of productive resources, much higher than some well developed western European countries.
The Production Possibility Frontier (PPF) is once again helpful for sorting out countries along two dimensions: productive (“butters”) and offensive (“guns”) resources, which are connected by a PPF curve for all countries in the world. Now, at any particular point of time these two resources are fixed so you cannot push the PPF to the right — meaning to increase both butters and guns at the same time — as you wish.
However, a country or an entity does have the freedom in choosing the unique combination of butters and guns. So for entities like Iran, North Korea and the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, their allocation points on the PPF will be high on the offensive resources but low on productive side. On the other hand, with its famous Swiss neutrality, Switzerland can afford to locate high on the productive but low on offensive resources.
The point is that the particular PPF allocation of resources for a country is largely controlled by its national DNA, the collective mindsets or collective preferences. Bringing national DNAs into the picture thus introduces diversity in international relations, avoiding determinism based on offensive resources only.
Diversity Of Preferences Brings Hope
For the US and China, diversity of preferences plays a crucial role because otherwise the two countries are bounded to be enemies — given their ever closer level of resources possessed. On a global PPF, the two countries would be sitting next to each other and trying to push each other out and off of the curve to fall below down to the inefficient territory — if they have the same national preferences. We would have to agree with Mearsheimer that the US and China are, and will be, fighting head on to dominate the world.
On the other hand, if international competitions are also shaped by national DNAs, and if the US and China have different — and complementary — preferences, then the world is not doomed but rather hopeful to have a peaceful and constructive competition working in favor of the entire mankind. We can then realistically hope to achieve (1) allocative efficiency of resources; (2) economy of scale; (3) lower opportunity cost; (4) productive efficiency, despite the scarcity of resources. Simply put, we can move the PPF to the right in a much faster pace than we can now.
The Road Blocks From the American Side
I have been arguing for such a rosy picture all along, but only if we can clear off road blocks from the American side. Yes, Americans have more problems, even though I love this country, and even though almost all thinkers and politicians in this country are blaming China for the problems. As much as the Chinese want to believe they are now on a par with the American, the cold and sobering truth is still that the US is stronger overall and more resourceful than China. In a two country game, Americans hold far more “high cards” than Chinese do. From the Trump era on, the Chinese have been fighting a carefully calibrated defensive game with the US. Despite Xi Jinping told the party leaders that the US is falling and China is rising, deep down not all Chinese are completely convinced. They just take pride in being one of the two final contesters in the global arena, something that has never happened before in modern times.
It is funny that many (most?) Americans believe the Chinese have been more aggressive than themselves, especially under Xi Jinping. The truth is that China is indeed more assertive than before, especially with its stupid and lousy “wolf worrier diplomacy,” but we should not lose the sight that they still take a defensive position. It is the Americans who have been “spoiled” by never meeting a real challenger since the end of WWII, making it easy for them to perceive China out of its proportion.
Visionary Leaders For China Are In Short Supply
Sadly such a trend is unlikely to be abated but rather to be escalated through repeated self-fulfillments over time. I wish I could say otherwise, but the US has not shown the world it has many visionary leaders — when it comes to dealing with China.
This reminds me of a friend from the soccer field. Shortly after we met, he asked me why the Chinese do not run. It turned out that he did not see me running up hills, as that is at least ten times harder than running around the flat soccer field. Anyway I did not debate his statement as I wanted to hear his explanation to his own question. What he said next was very interesting: The Chinese do not run because they believe slow is fast, and fast is slow.
I did not contest his point and only politely smiled as if that made sense to me. Of course it does not, even though it sounds philosophically deep. True, Chinese do have a saying that sometimes one can slow things down by moving too fast (欲速则不达), but it does not mean one should always move slow.
My point is that there are Americans who think they understand China and Chinese but they really don’t. They know enough to brag in front of other Americans, but not in front of Chinese.
It depresses me to watch such a great country moving on a wasteful and dangerous track to be collided with another country — an enemy largely in its own imaginations, when in fact China could have been the best friend to help the US consolidate its global leadership in more ways than all its allies combined could.
We Are In The Best & Worst Time
Another way to say it is that we live in the best time in history because China and the US have vastly different preferences, making it possible for them to complement or help each other. Americans care so much about values and ideas, while the Chinese emphasizes so much on materialist achievements. We know the earth moves around by both ideas and materials. If we can manage to integrate the two aspects, the whole world stands to gain.
In the meantime, we also live in the most dangerous time because the two cultures differ so much that it can be hard to carry out an effective and meaningful conversation. Expect misinterpretations and suspicions all the time, which could escalate to war when enough doubts and serious misreading are accumulated.
Let me begin from the root of the problems that creates so many troubles in the world.
Projecting The US Onto China
Humans have a natural tendency of projecting our own images or preferences onto others. Oftentimes this is harmless and even beneficial, such as treating pets and animals like humans, and demanding for humanistic treatments of animals.
Over-projections can bring problems and troubles. Some men are known to project their own preferences onto women and throughout their lives may never understand why women would want things differently from men. Over-projection is the opposite of empathy and gets in the way of growing the latter.
Mearsheimer’s thesis of resource-bounded ambitions fits poorly with Islamic extremism, or entities like Al-Qaeda that prefer to “rid the Muslim world of any non-Muslim influences and other teachings of Islamic author” according to Wikipedia. For one thing, such preferences were preinstalled before resources were accumulated. On the other hand, many European countries have more resources than Al-Qaeda but chose not to fight for regional or world dominance.
The problem of over-projecting gets bigger at international level, and we have seen it perfectly exemplified by Mearsheimer. According to him, China would be crazy not seeking regional and global hegemony when it has the necessary resources to do so. After all, the US did that in the past and he sees no reason why China should act any different.
Geographic borders and distances often prevent us from understanding each other thoroughly and deeply, yet they do not prevent us from projecting our own preferences onto theirs. In fact, borders and distances help promote over-projection as a shortcut, creating a fake impression that we have overcome the cognitive barriers in reading other countries. Given the differences between countries, such projections tend to be wrong in the first place, but sadly the same national differences that led to wrong projections also prevent us from learning timely feedbacks to know we were wrong about our projections.
The Law Of Self-Reinforced Over-Projections
The “first law” of national projections says a country tends to have self-reinforced projections of own preferences onto others. In other words, not only a country will project its own preference onto another, but the projection will strengthen itself over time, simply by getting or even generating evidences from dubious data.
Next time someone asks if China is the enemy, ask back whether he/she wants China to be the enemy. An enemy can be created or manufactured by one side if fully determined, this is what we mean by self-fulfillment or self-reinforcement.
The self-reinforced projection predicts that it take little for China to be seen as an evil and dangerous player. All that is needed is for the Chinese economy to grow larger and stronger, which will push the US to grow more suspicious — by years if not by days — just by looking at its sheer amount of resources.
Forget about the Thucydides trap, the Chinese had a better proverbial story that fits the current situation better. It says a commoner will be guilty in the eyes of the king for simply holding a piece of jade (匹夫无罪，怀璧其罪). Soon the voice of “China hawks” will beat that of the “China doves,” which will poison the Sino-US relationship in multiple ways.
The Law of Matched Strengths In Projection
The “second law” is that the stronger the domestic preferences, the easier to project them onto others. In other words, what we have taken for granted at home are more likely to be projected onto others, because we tend to believe doing otherwise is stupid and makes little sense. This is exactly what Mearsheimer said: China would be stupid not wanting global hegemony just like the US does. In essence, he was over-projecting the American exceptionalism onto China.
Stop here for now and will come back with more next time.