Hal Brands
Introduction
Theories of international relations—and explanations of state behavior—rise and fall with the geopolitical tide. What we now call “realism” emerged during and after World War II. The events of the 1930s and 1940s had shown that the world was rough and lawless and created an opening for an intellectual paradigm that emphasized the primacy of power and the ruthlessness of geopolitics. The end of the Cold War, by contrast, dealt a sharp blow to realism, by seeming to shatter its core premise. How, in a world ruled by power and self-interest, could a country as mighty as the Soviet Union simply acquiesce in its own decline and destruction?
The rise of China and the emergence of a sharp Sino-American competition are causing another swing of the intellectual pendulum. For a quarter century, Washington pursued a China policy meant to overcome the grimmest predictions of realism by drawing China into the thriving, liberal world order made possible by the Cold War’s end. That the opposite seems to have happened—that China used the prosperity and influence gained through economic integration to underwrite a policy of neo-totalitarianism at home and assertive expansion abroad—has upset more than the balance of power. China would seem to be the country realists have been waiting for, one whose ambition and penchant for geopolitical disruption rise inexorably along with its power.
Thus, the administration of Donald Trump described its National Security Strategy as a strategy of “principled realism”—a recognition that rivalry is inevitable because states are driven to compete by elemental antagonisms.1 Thucydides, considered the ancient founder of realism, is often invoked to explain how China’s rise has led inevitably to Sino-American hostility.2 Noted academic realists, some of whom accurately predicted that breathtaking Chinese growth would lead to trouble, have taken intellectual victory laps.3 If the post–Cold War era saw realism in eclipse, the era of great-power rivalry has seen realism’s revenge. That paradigm is increasingly the lens through which Chinese grand strategy and the Sino-America competition are interpreted.
The reality is not so simple. China’s unapologetic assertiveness and vaulting ambitions are, of course, intimately related to the massive power shift underway. The more brutish aspects of Chinese strategy recall realist tenets going back to the dialogue at Melos. Yet the reason the Chinese challenge is so stark is that China blends the claims of a rising power with the insecurities of an illiberal autocracy. The nature of the regime, as much as the nature of the international system, drives Beijing’s conduct.
This dynamic, in turn, will make the competition between America and China more fundamental and more protracted than it would be if it were “merely” driven by realpolitik. The United States doesn’t need a strategy of regime change vis-à-vis China. But it does need a sense of regime realism to understand the behavior of a potent rival.
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