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Updated Thursday, November 12, 2009 10:02 am TWN, By Robert Kagan and Dan Blumenthal, Special to The Washington Post

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'Strategic reassurance' that isn't

Those nations are under no illusion about great-power competition. India is engaged in strategic competition with China, especially in the Indian Ocean, which both see as their sphere of influence. Japan's government wants to improve relations with Beijing, but many in Japan fear an increasingly hegemonic China. The nations of Southeast Asia do business with China, but look to the United States for strategic support against their giant neighbor.

For decades, U.S. strategy toward China has had two complementary elements. The first was to bring China into the “family of nations” through engagement. The second was to make sure China did not become too dominant, through balancing. The Clinton administration pushed for China's accession to the World Trade Organization and normalized trade, but also strengthened the U.S. military alliance with Japan. The Bush administration fostered close economic ties and improved strategic cooperation with China. But the United States also forged a strategic partnership with India and enhanced its relations with Japan, Singapore and Vietnam. The strategy has been to give China a greater stake in peace, while maintaining a balance of power in the region favorable to democratic allies and American interests.

“Strategic reassurance” seems to chart a different course. Senior officials liken the policy to the British accommodation of a rising United States at the end of the 19th century, which entailed ceding the Western Hemisphere to American hegemony. Lingering behind this concept is an assumption of America's inevitable decline.

Yet nothing would do more to hasten decline than to follow this path. The British accommodation of America's rise was based on close ideological kinship. British leaders recognized the United States as a strategic ally in a dangerous world — as proved true throughout the 20th century.

No serious person would imagine a similar grand alliance and “special relationship” between an autocratic China and a democratic United States. For the Chinese — true realists — the competition with the United States in East Asia is very much a zero-sum game.

For that reason, “strategic reassurance” is likely to fail. The Obama administration cannot back out of the region any time soon; Obama's trip this week, in fact, seems designed to demonstrate American staying power. Nor is China likely to end or slow its efforts to militarily and economically dominate the region. So it will quickly become obvious that no one on either side feels reassured.

Unfortunately, the only result will be to make American allies nervous. For an administration that has announced “we are back” after years of alleged Bush administration neglect in Asia, this is not an auspicious beginning.

Robert Kagan is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Dan Blumenthal is a resident fellow in Asian studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

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