Rivalry Is a (Bad) Choice

The rival governments convince themselves that they have no choice but to oppose each other, but there are always alternatives that do not require the rivals to sacrifice core interests.

Michael Beckley has written a terrible article about the supposed perils of détente with China. It’s a familiar story that hawks love to tell every time that the U.S. finds itself on a collision course with another country. As they see it, rivalry is baked in and inevitable because of irreconcilable differences, and attempts to lessen tensions are seen as either useless or harmful because they play into the adversary’s hands.

This frees hawks of any responsibility for having put the U.S. on the collision course through the policy choices that they cheered on, and it allows them to dismiss the possibility that relations might be improved through negotiations and compromise. When you make it seem as if there is no avoiding rivalry and no way out of it, it makes it much easier to sell hardline policies. According to this extremely convenient worldview, confrontational U.S. policies and actions have nothing to do with creating and stoking the rivalry, but when the U.S. offers olive branches and tries to lower the temperature in the relationship it just encourages the other side to press its advantage. It should be obvious that this way of looking at the world is total nonsense.