Heg prevents Chinese military expansion and nuclear war through containment

Such costs might be acceptable in exchange for peace and security. But spheres of influence during the Cold War did not prevent the Soviets from repeatedly testing American redlines in Berlin, causing high-stakes crises in which nuclear war was a real possibility. Nor did those spheres prevent the two sides from competing sharply, and sometimes violently, throughout the “Third World.” Throughout history, spheres-of-influence settlements, from the Thirty Years’ Peace between Athens and Sparta to the Peace of Amiens between the United Kingdom and Napoleonic France have often ended, sooner or later, in war. The idea that spheres of influence are a formula for peace rests on assumptions that often go unexamined: that revisionist powers are driven primarily by insecurity, that their grievances are limited and can be easily satisfied, that the truly vital interests of competing powers do not conflict, and that creative statecraft can therefore fashion an enduring, mutually acceptable equilibrium. The trouble is that these premises don’t always hold. Ideology and the quest for greatness—not simply insecurity—often drive great powers. Rising states are continually tempted to renegotiate previous bargains once they have the power to do so. Offering concessions to a revisionist state may simply convince it that the existing order is fragile and can be tested further. Conceding a sphere of influence to a great-power challenger might not produce stability but simply give that challenger a better position from which to realize its ambitions. Consider the situation in the western Pacific. The most minimal Chinese sphere of influence would surely include Taiwan. Yet if Taiwan became a platform for Chinese military capabilities, the defense of other U.S. allies in the region, such as Japan and the Philippines, would become vastly more difficult. Nor would such a concession likely satisfy Chinese ambitions. A growing body of literature by scholars such as Toshi Yoshihara, James Holmes, Liza Tobin, and Elizabeth Economy suggests that China desires at the very least to push the United States beyond the chain of islands running from Japan to Taiwan to the Philippines. Even a limited Chinese sphere in the western Pacific would serve as a springboard to this larger objective. Meanwhile, the United States will have sacrificed a number of critical advantages by pulling out. A free Taiwan offers proof that Chinese culture and democracy are not incompatible; subjugating Taiwan would also allow Beijing to remove this ideological threat. Worse still, the United States would lose the edge that comes from being the only great power without significant security hazards near its borders. It was only after the United States achieved dominance in the Western Hemisphere that it could project power globally. Russia and China, by contrast, still have to deal with U.S. allies, partners, and military presences in their own backyards—a circumstance that diverts resources they might otherwise use to pursue more distant ambitions and compete with the United States at a truly global scale.