<< Introduction

Part One - Realism Bifurcated: Offensive and Defensive Realism

In order to determine the future of Chinese foreign policy, it is essential to draw upon the basic principles of the realist theory of international relations. Realism in its purest form is based upon the following assumptions: 1) that states are primary and rational actors, 2) states adjust their policies in order to further their own self-interests, and 3) for states, military and national security interests are the principal policies.[1] Further along in this analysis some of these assumptions will be slightly relaxed, at times incorporating principles related to structural realism. The author believes that in order to truly understand how a state is operating, one must study social, economic, security, and political elements of a country and how each of these parts interacts with one another. Such adjustments will include the role of multinational corporations and international organizations in the policy calculus, and economic determinants will be combined with military factors in determining the power of a state. Thus, the principal measures of power potential are population, gross national product (GNP), military size, and defense expenditures and trends. Only by incorporating all of these dynamics can a researcher grasp how a country’s leadership is thinking and as such, what that leadership’s next moves will be.

Realists divide state interests into those that are considered high politics—security and survival—and low politics—trade and other socio-economic policies. Under realism, the state will use all means necessary to achieve the objectives of the state up to and including the use of force.[2] Additionally, the capacity for one state to influence another state is determined by: 1) its capabilities, 2) its willingness to assert these capabilities and accept the consequences, and 3) a state’s relative capabilities compared to its competitor that may also include non-traditional power determinants.[3]

Realism concludes that states are motivated by power and national interest and as such will pursue gains relative to their peers and adversaries. The argument continues that in a system characterized by anarchy and threats viewed as omnipresent, a state will strive to increase its tangible power assets in comparison to its nearest threat or competitor.[4] Subsequently, nations will seek to maintain their territorial integrity and will focus on military security in its interactions with other actors in the system. Additionally, material capabilities, leadership, and unity are viewed as the center of power. States may also form alliances to balance power and thus increase their relative security.[5] Because states are rational actors, they will assess the costs and benefits of engaging in provocative actions and determine whether or not the expected utility that can come from such aggressive policies will be worth the consequences.[6]

The realist’s pursuit of security vis-à-vis power amalgamation tends to lead actors, especially those adhering to defensive realism, towards strategies of deterrence. This is in part because military policies under realism will most likely result in some sort of an arms race characterized by the security dilemma and will be in pursuit of a minimum credible deterrent. In classic deterrence, a state will avoid projecting force onto another state for fear that such an action will result in retaliation with unacceptably high casualties and damage. As this paper will later demonstrate, attempting to deploy China’s increased military might against the United States would be fruitless, for it would surely result in massive losses or possibly the destruction of the People’s Republic of China depending on the extent of such a challenge. However, the desire to confront the United States has been observed in the plane crash during April 2001 and hard-line rhetoric throughout recent years from the Chinese government. Nevertheless, a fundamental lack of ability or willingness to act upon such desires leads to the security dilemma. In such a circumstance, relative changes in the policies or actions of one state are viewed in an extremely skeptical light by a rival. As such, a buildup of arms, military mobilizations, or economically aggressive policies by State A are met with equal policies by State B and so on. The dyadic relationship characterized by the security dilemma is an environment ripe with misperceptions by both states and a fundamental lack of trust for any verbal or written commitment. This ambiguity of motivation contributes in part to the growing mistrust and turbulence between the United States and the People’s Republic of China that will be highlighted later in this paper.

The problem with such a security dilemma is illustrated as a case in point with the People’s Republic of China’s recent military modernization projects and economic expansion. A state’s own quest for security and stability may generate its own security dilemma by appearing seemingly threatening to others.[7] Based on this paper’s research, it is fair to conclude that China’s motivations for modernization and the policies that have been used to pursue this modernization have resulted in a security dilemma. In other words, calls to nationalist pride combined with growing trade deficits in China’s favor, aggressive military buildups and modernization, and hard-line political agendas have led other states to feel that they might be the target of China’s newfound power, and only gains relative to the Chinese will keep their countries safe.

However, realists also argue that a competitor will strive to emulate the policies and general characteristics of the state to which they aspire in order to be viewed as similar and non-threatening by the hegemon and international community.[8] To support this argument is China’s bid for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and the drive for admission into the World Trade Organization (WTO). Neither policy would seem to improve the security of China drastically; however, being a member of the WTO and hosting the Olympic Games bring economic implications and prestige—signs of a powerful nation on the rise. No longer would the PRC be viewed as a rogue power, engaged in diplomatic tiffs over Taiwan and a downed US Navy plane, but as a mainstream country capable of rivaling what is at times viewed as a heavy-handed United States. Great powers are rewarded if they appear both strong and potentially dangerous because states ally with the strongest and most threatening powers.

At the same time, it must be mentioned that realism often suggests that states will balance against a threatening hegemon. In many respects this is what can be observed through China’s behavior. China has worked to be a participant in international organizations, treaties, and events in order to appear benign to the United States and the rest of the world, yet these policies simply represent efforts towards power amalgamation by the Chinese government. Part of this is the argument that states will seek out policies that increase their relative power compared to their nearest competitors. Alliances may provide relative gains for a state in terms of rapid increases in power potential, yet they hold no promise for a lasting, trustworthy dyadic relationship, as most alliances are seen as temporary. As these basic principles of realism have now been established, the next step is to break the large concept of realism down into its two variations: offensive and defensive.

Offensive and Defensive Realism

In the simplest bifurcation of realism, Sean Lynn-Jones and Steven E. Miller argue that realism is composed of both an aggressive and offensive version and of a more defensive orientation. In offensive realism, states view security as a fixed pie; unless a state works to increase its own security and resources by coercive means, others will take their portions and use them against the state that surrendered such capabilities in order to obtain more security. In such a circumstance, war and other aggressive military postures are more likely, and international competition will be rampant. At the same time, those states that believe that there is an infinite amount of security in the international system will adopt defensive strategies and view security as non-zero sum, therefore allowing themselves simply to work to retain their own security.[9] In this configuration, the old cliché that the best offense is a good defense holds true. Chairman Mao Zedong once called for an “active defense,” by which he meant that the Chinese must assert an “offensive defense, or defense through decisive engagement.”[10] Mao’s statement provides a springboard for this paper’s argument that China is best described as a defensive realist state.

In order to suggest later in this paper that the People’s Republic of China’s behavior fits into a model for defensive realism, it is necessary to elaborate first on the behaviors and actions that are demonstrative of this form of realism. In Table 1 on the next page, many different state actions have been posited and the behavior that corresponds to both offensive and defensive realism are explained. Descriptions of the categories of action follow.

Table 1: Traits Associated with Different Types of Realism

Crisis refers to any political, economic, social, or military event that may arise between the focus state and one or more actors and leads to either the threat to use force; the use of force through military exercises, tests, or deployments; or a military confrontation that may or may not include enemy fatalities. If a researcher of foreign policy was to analyze a given crisis that had broken out, he would observe that under an offensive framework, the state had initiated the behavior that had led to the crisis. Under defensive realism, however, it would be suggested that the state was acting in a reactionary manner to the threat posed.

Military modernization refers to the speed, intensity, and motivation behind a state’s military buildup and/or weapons procurement policy. A defensive realist state seeks to obtain a military capable of a minimal credible deterrent relative to its competitor(s), whereby the buildup of material gains is obvious, but only to the point that it reaches parity or near-parity with strategic peers. On the other hand, the offensive state adopts a military policy that builds up its arsenal and consequently its national capability as much and as quickly as possible.

Domestic social policy describes how a state’s government treats ethnic, religious, and linguistic minority groups within the state’s border and whether they seek to blindly subjugate them or have respect for human rights. Both the defensive and offensive realist state works to put down internal movements seeking to disrupt state policy, yet the aggressiveness with which each variation does so differs. The offensive realist state will not respond to international objections and pressures to curtail abuses of minorities and political dissidents. A defensive realist state, however, stops short of blind persecution, instead working to control these movements only to the point that the international community sees the country as unified.

Political rhetoric is a subjective idea that pertains to how a state interacts diplomatically with other states and how said state promises to pursue its policy objectives. The concept of territory is crucial, especially to this paper, in that it highlights a given state’s respect for the notion of the Westphalian nation-state and a nation’s policy concerning additional territory acquisition. Where an offensive realist state will overtly declare its broad intention to challenge the hegemon and regional competitors, the defensive realist state will be very clear in what policies it is pursuing, the objectives behind those policies, and how it will react to any member of the international community attempting to disrupt its agenda.

Participation in international organizations, a state’s ability and desire to cooperate, and alliances into which a state will enter are the crux of the next two categories. Offensive realist states typically will quickly find themselves in the middle of international or regional rivalries that disrupt the opportunity for the development of trust—opportunities which otherwise could lead to the creation of alliances or admittance into international organizations. On the other hand, the defensive realist state will most likely be entrenched in regional rivalries as a result of its assertion of a defensive perimeter. Although regional alliances are highly unlikely because of this, where they are available, such alliances will be utilized only to the point that they assist in eventually acquiring a regional hegemonic status. Nevertheless, that same state may utilize international organizations to bolster its international prestige and opportunities to assist in the modernization process.

Finally, economic policy is simply the state policy of expanding its economy and securing the resources and capital needed to do so. As it pertains to economic and energy security, the offensive realist state will assert its power, seeking to control the oil markets to include price and output influence by using economic, political, and military threats of and uses of force such as sanctions and military strikes. Conversely, the defensive realist state is concerned with securing trade routes and assuring relations with export countries conducive to continuing energy trade. Under such conditions, this would not only include military expansion to defend energy trade routes, but such indirect strategies as maintaining a cooperative relationship with the European Union or the United States to defend Middle East oil interests.

Going back to more general terms, power under defensive realism works as an instrument or tool to obtain minimum policy objectives, whereas offensive realism holds power to be of supreme importance to furthering states’ policy objectives to the fullest extent that capabilities permit.[11]

Defensive realists believe that much of international politics is a Prisoners’ Dilemma or a more complex security dilemma. The desire to gain mixes with the need for protection; much of statecraft consists of structuring situations so that states can maximize their common interests. The ever-present fear that others will take advantage of the state—and the knowledge that others have reciprocal worries—leads diplomats to seek arrangements that will reduce if not neutralize these concern.[12]

In this respect, the defensive realist will utilize a minimax strategy; maximizing minimum gain and minimizing maximum loss. This paper argues that states that adhere to a defensive strategy will not only adopt defensive policies, but those states will also form a sphere or arc of influence in their immediate global theater that they will claim as a defensive perimeter. Within such a region, a state is willing to project its power to retain control over that which it feels belongs to it. Defensive realism argues that states will respond to the anarchy of the international system with the use of force out of fear, rather than out of hegemonic desires. It is also important to note that both defensive and offensive realists share the idea of relative gains as all realist states do. A defensive realist would be concerned with the relative gains necessary to secure control over its defensive perimeter, for example, as well as all of the other prescriptions for a defensive realist state presented in Table 1. Similarly, while an offensive realist state is concerned with absolute gains to a great extent, it also strives to obtain relative gains until it has the capability to overcome the defenses and conquer a territory or state, for example, as well as the other ideas indicated in Table 1. At the same time, though, defensive realists assert that analysts should not overstate the role of anarchy in international relations, for global interactions provide incentives for restrained behavior. Reckless, expansionist behavior characteristic of offensive realism is a result of domestic political factors, and not attributable to anarchy.[13] In a globalized world where trade and economic policies carry great influence and the ability to adopt internationally accepted, imperialist policies is non-existent, a defensive strategy is likely to be the most widely accepted and tolerated.

Now that a framework for the variations of realism has been established, it is possible to explore a case study of the People’s Republic of China. The next portions of this analysis will serve the dual purposes of establishing the accuracy of the distinctions posited earlier between offensive and defensive realism as well as proving that China is in fact operating within the realm of defensive realism. Earlier in this section, general assertions concerning the behavior of both offensive and defensive realist states were explained in each of the sectors that Table 1 presented. In order, though, to argue that China is truly a defensive realist state, this analysis will look for specific policy and behavior traits. Most notably will be policies in the political, social, economic, and security sector that support China’s objective in creating a defensive perimeter. Such policies will include the harshest political rhetoric towards other regional states trying to gain control of disputed territories in the South China Sea. Also, it is necessary to look for military modernizations that focus on developing military capabilities with the potential to deploy successfully within this defensive cordon and not a push for global capabilities. This analysis also hypothesizes that the economic policies of the People’s Republic of China will pursue energy security—in particular with respect to oil—in order to support its expanding economic and security infrastructure.

Notes

Part Two >>