June 21, 2011
THE
UNITED States and the People’s Republic of China are locked in a quiet
but increasingly intense struggle for power and influence, not only in
Asia, but around the world. And in spite of what many earnest and
well-intentioned commentators seem to believe, the nascent Sino-American
rivalry is not merely the result of misperceptions or mistaken
policies; it is driven instead by forces that are deeply rooted in the
shifting structure of the international system and in the very different
domestic political regimes of the two Pacific powers.
Throughout history, relations between dominant and rising states have
been uneasy—and often violent. Established powers tend to regard
themselves as the defenders of an international order that they helped
to create and from which they continue to benefit; rising powers feel
constrained, even cheated, by the status quo and struggle against it to
take what they think is rightfully theirs. Indeed, this story line, with
its Shakespearean overtones of youth and age, vigor and decline, is
among the oldest in recorded history. As far back as the fifth century
BC the great Greek historian Thucydides began his study of the
Peloponnesian War with the deceptively simple observation that the war’s
deepest, truest cause was “the growth of Athenian power and the fear
which this caused in Sparta.”
No comments:
Post a Comment