Chinese Century - Debate

Debate

Michael Beckley, a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, rejects the idea that:

• The United States is in decline relative to China and;
• The hegemonic burdens the United States bears to sustain the globalized, unipolar system contributes to its decline.

Alternatively, Beckley argues the United States’ power is durable and unipolarity and globalization are the main reasons why. “The United States derives competitive advantages from its preponderant position, and globalization allows it to exploit these advantages, attracting economic activity and manipulating the international system to its benefit.” If the United States really was in terminal decline, Beckley argues the U.S. would adopt neomercantilist economic policies and disengage from military commitments in Asia. “If however, the United States is not in decline, and if globalization and hegemony are the main reasons why, then the United States should do the opposite: it should contain China’s growth by maintaining a liberal international economic policy, and it should subdue China’s ambitions by sustaining a robust political and military presence in Asia.” Beckley believes that the United States benefits from being an extant hegemon—the U.S. did not overturn the international order to its benefit in 1990, but rather, the existing order collapsed around it.

Scholars that are skeptical of America’s maintaining unipolarity include Robert Pape, who has calculated that “one of the largest relative declines in modern history” stems from “the spread of technology to the rest of the world.” Similarly, Fareed Zakaria writes, “The unipolar order of the last two decades is waning not because of Iraq but because of the broader diffusion of power across the world.” This is known as the "diffusive effect," or the tendency for ideas to trickle down from established to peripheral areas, empowering the latter.