Three points wrong in Matthew Kroenig’s article
On Agust 27, Foreign Policy published Matthew Kroenig’s article International Relations Theory Suggests Great-Power War Is Coming. The title is scary enough to attract readers’ attention, including mine. However, after reading it, I think there are at least three points wrong in the article.
Here is the web link of Kroenig’s article.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/08/27/international-relations-theory-suggests-great-power-war-is-coming/
The main argument of the article is that according to International Relations textbooks, the United States, Russia, and China are on a collision course.
The most obvious mistake in his article is in the following paragraph.
But China is also decoupling from the free world. Xi is prohibiting Chinese tech firms from listing on Wall Street, for example, because he doesn’t want to share proprietary information with Western powers.
In fact, the U.S. and Chinese governments reached a landmark audit deal on August 26, one day before Kroenig’s article was published, which in boon for Chinese tech companies listing in U.S. stock markets. Here is the link of Reuter’s report.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/china-asks-firms-auditors-prepare-us-checks-hong-kong-sources-2022-08-26/
I guess Kroenig’s article was written before he learned this latest development. But what he thought was wrong.
Anybody may have wrong judgment sometimes. If this mistake is forgivable, the second one seems rooted in deep prejudice to China.
In his article, Kroenig kept on putting China in the position of a invader like Germany in WWI and Japan in WWII and supposed China would “invade” Taiwan. Since 1949 when the People’s Republic of China was founded, it has never invaded any country, and Taiwan is seen as part of it. Would the U.S. invades Hawaii? Why Kroenig has these sayings? Is that because the United States kept on launching military actions overseas in the decades after WWII and invaded many countries, so some American scholars like Kroenig supposed China would do the same? Is that because some American scholars really think the U.S. government’s one-China policy is only in name, so they suppose China will “invade” Taiwan?
It is really disappointing that these words were written by Kroenig, who is the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and was appointed recently as a Commissioner on the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. The U.S. policy to China would go wrong if too many like-minded people with Kroenig go into the policy making circle.
The third thing I think is wrong is that we can not always use old IR theory to see today’s world. I know there must be many people don’t agree with me. It may need a long time to prove the old IR theory, no matter realistic, liberal or constructive, should be improved to better adapt to current world politics. But I see there are many discussions about some new phenomenon in international relations, such as the increasing of connectivity in human society.
Liberal theorists realized that interdependence is reducing the chances of direct military conflicts among big powers, especially those with nuclear arms. But its discussion is still in the frame of power politics. So Kroenig used power politics to argue that this multipolar world can not be peaceful. Can liberal theorists imagine an international system, political or economic, not dominated by big powers? Or say, truly democratic?
In old IR theories, only power matters, and only big powers decide. Countries are always in power struggle, that’s “world politics. ” Other talkings are nonsense, such as the “Shared future of human society” proposed by China. That may be why American scholars like Kroenig believe the war between China and U.S. is inevitable.
If we realize that there are some threats much bigger than power struggle between countries, such as the climate crisis and pandemics, and there are some other things more important than power struggle, such as a better life for people in poverty and misery, and the recovery of our planet eco-system, maybe we could put more attention to constructive and meaningful issues.
I don’t know exactly what’s behind the rhetoric of “China threat” and “New Cold War.” But I saw the arms-sale business gets more profits in world conflicts. They don’t want peace. Hope Dr. Kroenig is not with them. ###