Great power competition is inevitable --- the alternative causes global war.

Not long after the collapse of the Soviet Union, scholars like , , and began voicing concerns about a new era of great power competition with China. But well into the first decade of the 21st century, many saw such fears as relics of a bygone era of international politics – no longer relevant in the age of global interdependence. Today, it is the optimists who are the . Many in the U.S. foreign policy community who once enthusiastically supported engagement and cooperation with China now tend to advocate much more cautious positions, if not outright anti-engagement. In fact, the United States and China should have anticipated intense security competition in East Asia from the beginning of the post-Cold War period. The two sides will find it increasingly difficult to avoid such competition over the coming decades. The fundamental reason does not have to do with the nature of either country’s politics or society, but rather with the basic structure of the situation in which the two great powers are dealing with each other. The central problem is that, no matter what it does, China probably cannot commit to not exploiting its growing power at the expense of the United States and its allies. Beijing doesn’t have to do much to create justifiable fears among its interlocutors. Even if China had no intention of aggressing against its neighbors, they obviously can’t trust that it will stay that way 10, 20, or 50 years down the road. Therefore, out of essentially defensive motivations, the United States and its allies will continue to pursue measures to correct the growing imbalance of regional power driven by China’s rise – beefing up their military capabilities, adjusting their defense postures to array more forces in China’s vicinity, pursuing more cutting-edge military technologies while trying to deny them to Beijing, and forming new arrangements for security cooperation directed against China. But from China’s perspective, such efforts will invariably look quite threatening. They will appear as efforts by a hostile military coalition to “gang up” on China. China is right to think in this way, even if its interlocutors are acting with defensive motivations. Beijing’s leaders should understand that there is ultimately little China can do to fundamentally alleviate its neighbors’ concerns and that they will be searching hard for ways to bolster their security at its expense. This, in turn, means that the “rising power” itself must continuously worry that its rivals might eventually find the means to inflict a devastating reversal of fortunes upon China. Thus, out of its own legitimate fears China will adopt riskier measures to shore up its own security, which will tend to “confirm” the fears harbored by the United States and its allies and drive them to adopt even stronger containment measures. The generated under conditions of shifting power tend to make both sides adopt increasingly hardline policies toward each other. All of this is to say that intense security competition between the United States and China will probably be unavoidable over the coming decades. There is bound to be considerable tension and hostility, and even crises that carry a serious risk of escalating to militarized conflict. Some may call this a “.” It most certainly is. But simply recognizing a self-fulfilling prophecy at work does not mean that one can escape it in any fundamental sense. Unfortunately, the United States and China will increasingly find themselves at loggerheads with each other, even if policymakers on both sides realize the self-fulfilling dimensions of their mutual hostility.