约翰·米尔斯海默 谈美中竞争 让他紧张

这是一个让我很紧张的问题

约翰·米尔斯海默谈美中竞争

https://oxfordpoliticalreview.com/2023/01/12/this-is-an-issue-that-makes-me-very-nervous-john-mearsheimer-on-the-us-china-rivalry/

杰森·周 & 安德鲁·王 2023 年 1 月 12 日

约翰·米尔斯海默教授是芝加哥大学温德尔·哈里森杰出服务教授，也是当今最著名的国际关系学者之一。 在这个由两部分组成的采访中，编辑 Jason Chau 和 Andrew Wang 向米尔斯海默教授询问了影响当今国际政治的一些主要力量。 本系列的第一部分重点关注中国，特别是中美竞争。

让我们先从中国目前正在发生的事情开始。 习近平最近在党的二十大后巩固了自己的权力，但针对该政权的零新冠政策引发了广泛的抗议，其中许多抗议言论已升级为挑战政权本身。 这种国内动荡是否会激励习近平采取转移注意力的策略，特别是采取更具侵略性的外交政策？

我认为这根本不可能发生。 我很难想象中国会爆发一场值得发动的战争，并有理由利用这场冲突来镇压国内的抗议活动。 我认为习近平和他的副手们要做的就是集中精力想办法同时解决新冠病毒问题和封锁（抗议）问题。 这里的主要焦点将是内在的，而不是外在的。

您是否担心中国在国际舞台上利用规范转变和其他工具来分散人们对国内人权问题等国内问题的注意力？

我认为中国在各个层面上都深入参与了国际政治，而且我认为中国人今天认为最好不要破坏现状并不必要地与其他国家对抗。 我认为他们得出的结论是“战狼”外交适得其反，如果有的话，他们想从另一个方向切入并强调软实力。 我认为这是一个明智的策略，而且我很难相信他们会采取一些顽固的外交策略来解决国内问题。

由于中美之间存在深刻的意识形态差异，您认为两国可以在气候变化等重要问题上进行合作吗？

中美之间不存在意识形态冲突，而是实力冲突。 中国是共产主义国家，美国是自由民主国家，但从1990年到2017年左右，他们相处得很好。那段时间发生了一些变化，但不是意识形态的变化。

改变的是力量平衡：中国和美国现在是激烈的竞争对手，因为中国已经成为美国的同等竞争对手，而中国有兴趣像美国统治西半球那样统治亚洲。 从中国的角度来看，这是完全有道理的，但从美国的角度来看，这是完全不可接受的。 这引发了激烈的安全竞争，并可能导致未来的热战。 希望情况不会如此，但这种可能性很大。 乔·拜登和习近平是否聚在一起讨论如何改善安全竞争并不重要。 无论他们互相说什么，安全竞争都会发生。 因此，当我听说这两位领导人之间举行了会晤，并且有希望我们能够大大改善安全竞争时，我不相信。 美国和中国注定要相互竞争。

在您的写作和研究中，一个始终如一的主题是权力平衡的想法。 您认为这是超级大国领导人所认同的国际关系叙述吗？ 或者他们可能将意识形态视为重要工具？

我认为意识形态是覆盖邮寄拳头的天鹅绒手套。 从美国的例子来看，在两极或多极世界中，他们的行为方式非常现实。 然而，他们用自由主义言论掩盖了现实主义行为。 自由主义言论对于美国来说就像是天鹅绒手套。

我想，就中国而言，他们在未来几年的表现将与过去几年一样，以一种非常现实的政治方式。 他们会用意识形态论据来掩盖这一点，让他们看起来是好人，而美国是坏人。 我在过去访问中国时发现，我的中国对话者喜欢提出这样的论点：中国是儒家文化，儒家思想是一种防御性意识形态——中国人从来不是侵略者，永远是受害者。 这听起来很像美国例外论：美国人也喜欢认为自己是好人，他们从不做错事，行为不端的总是对方。 所以意识形态是我

掩盖所有大国现实政治的工具。

最重要的是力量平衡，像中国和美国这样的国家认识到，拥有尽可能多的权力对它们的生存很重要。 中国人大篇幅谈论从1840年代末到1940年代末的“世纪国耻”。 究其原因，是中国实力弱，被体系内的大国利用了。 所以如果你是今天的中国人，你就很清楚你不想成为弱者，因为你不想再遭受一个世纪的国耻。 中国人现在正在努力做的是让中国比现在更加强大，以优化其在这场大国政治游戏中的生存机会。

你提到美国和中国基本上是注定要竞争的。 在这种情况下，您认为战争有可能发生吗？

我确实认为冷战，我指的是激烈的安全竞争，已经在发生。 中美之间爆发热战的可能性很大； 比冷战时期美国和苏联之间发生战争的可能性更大。

冷战时期美苏竞争的焦点是中欧，北约与华沙条约组织在这里对峙。 因为在中欧，德国边境两侧都有两支庞大的军队，每支军队都武装到牙齿，拥有数千件核武器，因此发动战争的可能性极小，因为存在以下风险： 升级到热核水平是如此之大。 欧洲非常稳定。

如果你看看中美竞争，就会发现三个主要的潜在冲突点：南海、台湾和东海。 想象因台湾或南中国海爆发战争要容易得多。 这些地方的战争不会涉及拥有数千枚核武器的大规模军队在大陆上相互碰撞。 从这个意义上说，战争的可能性更大。

台湾的局势尤其危险，因为中国人坚定地致力于将台湾重新纳入大陆——他们将台湾视为神圣的领土。 与此同时，美国人坚定地致力于维持台湾的独立，因为美国认为这对于应对中国的威胁具有重要的战略意义。 因此，我们面临的情况是，中国人越致力于收回台湾，美国人就越致力于让台湾脱离中国的控制。 这是一个让我非常紧张的问题。

请继续关注 OPR 采访米尔斯海默的第二部分，我们将讨论俄罗斯、乌克兰、北约等问题。

This is an issue that makes me very nervous

John Mearsheimer on the US-China Rivalry

https://oxfordpoliticalreview.com/2023/01/12/this-is-an-issue-that-makes-me-very-nervous-john-mearsheimer-on-the-us-china-rivalry/

Jason Chau & Andrew Wang January 12, 2023

Professor John Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and one of the most well-known international relations scholars today. In this two-part interview, editors Jason Chau and Andrew Wang ask Prof Mearsheimer about some of the primary forces influencing international politics today. The first part of this series focuses on China, and particularly the US-China rivalry.

Let’s start with what’s happening in China right now. Xi Jinping has recently cemented his grip on power after the 20th Party Congress, but there have been widespread protests over the regime’s zero-COVID policies, in many of which the language has escalated to challenging the regime itself. Might this domestic unrest create incentive for Xi to pursue diversionary tactics, particularly in the form of a more aggressive foreign policy?

I don’t think that’s likely to happen at all. I find it hard to imagine that there is a war worth starting for China that would justify using that conflict as a way of dampening down the protests at home. I think what Xi Jinping and his lieutenants will do is concentrate on figuring out a way to deal with the COVID problem and the lockdown [protests] problem at the same time. The main focus here will be inward, not outward.

Are you concerned about China using normative shifts and other tools on the international stage to distract from domestic problems such as human rights issues at home?

I think China is deeply involved in international politics at all levels, and I think what the Chinese believe today is that it’s best for them not to rock the boat and antagonise other countries unnecessarily. I think they’ve come to the conclusion that ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy backfired, and if anything they want to cut in the other direction and emphasise soft power. I think that’s a smart strategy, and I find it difficult to believe that they would pursue some hard-nosed diplomatic strategy to deal with the problems at home.

With deep ideological differences between the US and China, do you think the two can collaborate on important issues like climate change?

There is no ideological conflict between the US and China, but a conflict about power. China is a communist country and the United States is a liberal democracy, and yet they got along perfectly well from 1990 up until around 2017. Something changed around then, and it wasn’t an ideological change. 

What changed was the balance of power: China and the United States are now bitter rivals because China has become a peer competitor of the United States, and China is interested in dominating Asia the way the United States dominates the Western hemisphere. This makes perfect sense from China’s perspective, but from America’s perspective this is completely unacceptable. That has caused an intense security competition, which might lead to a hot war down the road. Hopefully, that won’t be the case, but there is a serious possibility of that. Whether Joe Biden and Xi Jinping get together and talk about how to ameliorate the security competition matters little. The security competition is going to take place regardless of what they say to each other. So when I hear that there was a meeting between these two leaders and that there is some hope that we could greatly ameliorate the security competition, I don’t believe it. The United States and China are destined to compete against each other.

One consistent theme throughout your writing and research is the idea of balance of power. Do you think this is an account of international relations that the leaders of superpowers subscribe to? Or might they see ideology as an important tool?

I think that ideology is the velvet glove that covers the mailed fist. What you see in the American case, in a bipolar or multipolar world, is that they behave in a very realist fashion. However, they cover up that realist behaviour with liberal rhetoric. Liberal rhetoric is the velvet glove in the American case. 

I would imagine, in the Chinese case, that they will behave in the years ahead as they have behaved in past years, in a very realpolitik fashion. And they will cover it up with ideological arguments that make it look like they are the good guy and America is the bad guy. What I have discovered in my past visits to China is that my Chinese interlocutors like to make the argument that China is a Confucian culture, and Confucianism is a defensive ideology – the Chinese are never the aggressors, always the victims. It sounds a lot like American exceptionalism: Americans also like to think that they are the good guys, that they never do anything wrong, that it’s always the other side that misbehaves. So ideology is the instrument that is disguising realpolitik in all great powers.

What matters the most is the balance of power, and states like China and the United States recognize that it’s important for their survival to have as much power as they can possibly garner. The Chinese talk at great lengths about the “Century of National Humiliation,” which ran from the late 1840’s to the late 1940’s. The cause of that was that China was weak, of which the Great Powers in the system took advantage. So if you’re Chinese today, you understand full well that you don’t want to be weak, because you don’t want to suffer another Century of National Humiliation. What the Chinese are trying to do now is make China even more powerful than it is now to optimise its chances for survival in this game of Great Power politics.

You mentioned that the US and China are basically destined for competition. In this dynamic, do you think war is likely?

I do think a cold war, by which I mean an intense security competition, is already taking place. There is a serious possibility of a hot war between the US and China; more likely than a war was between the US and the Soviet Union in the Cold War. 

The focal point of the competition between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War was central Europe, where NATO was faced off against the Warsaw Pact. Because you had a situation in central Europe where there were two massive armies on either side of the inter-German border, each armed to the teeth with thousands of nuclear weapons, it was extremely unlikely that you could get a war started because the risk of escalation to the thermonuclear level was so great. Europe was remarkably stable.

If you look at the US-China competition, there are three main potential points of conflict: the South China Sea, Taiwan, and the East China Sea. It’s much easier to imagine a war breaking out over Taiwan or the South China Sea. A war in these places would not involve massive armies crashing into each other on the mainland with thousands of nuclear weapons. In that sense, war is more likely.

The situation in Taiwan is especially dangerous because the Chinese are deeply committed to reintegrating Taiwan into the mainland – they view it as sacred territory. At the same time, the Americans are deeply committed to maintaining an independent Taiwan because the US believes it is of great strategic importance to dealing with the Chinese threat. So here we have a  situation where the more committed the Chinese are to getting Taiwan back, the more committed the Americans are to keeping Taiwan out of China’s hands. This is an issue that makes me very nervous.

Stay tuned for Part Two of the OPR’s interview with Mearsheimer, where we will discuss Russia, Ukraine, NATO, and more.