Failing to Balance against China: A Pivotal Case in Reverse

Recent research shows that states have not always pursued balancing policies when faced with supposed challenges to their security or survival. Various reasons have been advanced to explain why the expected balancing behavior often fails to materialize. These reasons, however, are generally unable to account for the absence of such behavior on the part of China's neighbors in reaction to its recent sharp rise. The non-occurrence of balancing behavior in this case, under circumstances that should be most favorable to its occurrence, provides a pivotal case that strongly rebukes balance-of-power perspectives, especially with respect to their claims about states' proclivity to engage in balancing behavior. At the same time, this non-occurrence suggests that reasons other than those that have been typically mentioned to cause a failure to balance must have been at work. I argue that states do not always trade off prospective economic gains for the sake of balancing against possible future security threats. Balancing policies entail various opportunity costs that can put them in a worse position than otherwise. These costs include the foregone benefits of trading with a large and thriving economy, the guns-versus-butter tradeoff, and the risks of triggering arms racing with third parties. These pertinent motivations are different from any bandwagoning incentive referring to a desire to share the spoils of a powerful country's aggression. The forces of globalization tend to abet these motivations to cooperate and to eschew balancing, motivations, tendencies that can be further reinforced by reassuring policies by the prospective target of balancing.

並列關鍵字

balance of power ； internal and external balancing by armament and alignment ； China's rise ； opportunity costs ； guns-versus-butter tradeoffs ； bandwagoning

國際替代計量

全文下載

主題瀏覽