Politics

Ловушка Киндлбергера

Jan 9, 2017 Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

КЕМБРИДЖ (США) – При разработке политики свой администрации в отношении Китая будущему президенту США Дональду Трампу следует помнить о двух серьёзных ловушках, которые для него приготовила история. О «ловушке Фукидида» уже упоминал председатель КНР Си Цзиньпин; это предупреждение древнегреческого историка о том, что может разразиться катастрофическая война, если существующая держава (такая, как США) начинает слишком опасаться набирающей силу новой державы (такой, как Китай). Но Трампу следует опасаться ещё и «ловушки Киндлбергера»: Китай может, наоборот, выглядеть скорее слишком слабым, чем слишком сильным.

Чарльз Киндлбергер, интеллектуальный архитектор плана Маршалла, преподавший затем в МИТ, так объяснял причины катастрофического десятилетия 1930-х: США заняли место Великобритании в качестве крупнейшей глобальной державы, но не взяли на себя британскую роль по обеспечению глобальных общественных благ. В результате, глобальная система распалась, началась депрессия, геноцид, мировая война. Сегодня, когда растёт сила Китая, будет ли эта страна помогать созданию глобальных общественных благ?

Внутри государств правительства создают общественные блага, например, охрану общественного порядка и окружающей среды, которые приносят пользу всем гражданам без исключения. На глобальном же уровне общественные блага, такие как стабильный климат, финансовая стабильность, свобода морей, обеспечиваются коалициями во главе с крупнейшими державами.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 18 Comments on this article

Nikola Djuric Jun 6, 2017

"comment has been deleted"
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Teddy Locsin May 29, 2017

Illuminating, thank you. Awaiting Allison's book. Will read it with this commentary in mind wch is like Arthur Stein's Respites or Resolutions in The Next Great War? Nothing inevitable except mistakes.
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kiers sohn Jan 16, 2017

This makes great sense of the re-wiring the world is going through. Now what Trump is doing, makes sense, even though his blathering crass public style is off-putting.
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Yoshimichi Moriyama Jan 12, 2017

Japan looks like Great Britain...to lead Asian resurgence and renaissance?
The georgraphical analogy, if you have one, may be correct to some extent, but a cultural factor is not taken into the picture and so I cannot say it is a good analogy. "I learned the Japanese don't act but they react (Bernard Krisher, Japan As We Lived it, Yohan Publications, Inc. Tokyo)." This is where one major difference lies between Japanese culture and Chinese. To the Japanese bonnie things lie over the ocean, they think they must learn from overseas; to the Chinese bonnie things are all in China and they think people should come from overseas obsequiously or at least putting on an obsequious appearance like Richard Nixon to the Middle Kingdom to admire.
You may have the Japanese "Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere" in your doubtful mind but "Actually these (Japanese) pan-Asian sentiments were never supported by much substance. The pan-Asian sentiments of the Japanese themselves were felt largely for Chinese and applied little to other Asians...Thus the periodic flare-up of pan-Asian feelings in Japan has had little content and has been more a negative reacton to the West (Edwin O. Reischaur, The Japanes)." Reischauer, a Harvard professor, was appointed ambassador to Japan by President Kennedy.

An accident happened on July 7, 1937, near Beijing between Japanese and Chinese armies. Both of them wanted and tried to contain it and prevent it from turning into a big war, but it eventually did. Since it had become a big war, the new Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka, whose wife was an aunt to Prime Minister Abe's grandfather, said "the Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere," because it had become such a big continental war that some leaders felt the need for a big phrase to persuade the sceptical and doubtful Japanese people who had fathers, brothers, and sons fighting in China. They wanted "peace with honor" like Richard Nixon and Kissinger in the Vietnam War.
The Japanese people were astounded and shocked and frightened to hear the radio news of the Pearl Harbor attack in the early morning, December 8, 1941, but they were relieved at the same time to think that it would solve the problem, hanging heavily over their minds, with China that had lasted for over four years. Matsuoka had been dismissed from the post of foreign minister in July 1941 by Prime Minister Konoe because the Prime Minister saw him a big obstacle standing in the way of success in the US-Japanese negotioans that had been going on in Washington. Matsuoka, ailing, cried bitterly at the news of the outbreak of the war. He had not intended anything like that either.
If the so-called Japanese militarists had really wanted to turn East Asia into the Japanese sphere of influence, why should they have started it first on China and then done it on the United States after more than four years of attrition and exhaustion in China?

Please read my two replies below to vivek iyer.
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jagjeet sinha Jan 12, 2017

THE DENG DEFENSE
China looks like Germany - there is always room at the top, the confrontation with neighbours seems so similar.
Japan looks like Great Britain - an Island destined by history to lead Asian resurgence and renaissance.
Russia looks like France - both leaders of larger causes (ClubMed, ClubRed) challenging The Incumbent Superpower.
India looks like Italy - manoeuvring n meandering until they tilt the balance towards the Winning Alliance.

Britain's First Brexit changed the World by creating The Anglosphere - that Winston Churchill masterfully marshalled to remain ahead.
France Germany Russia have all challenged The Anglosphere but never really, even remotely leaving the outcome in doubt.
The regrouped challengers have assembled a dodgy European Union - with The Euro dreaming of Dollar demolition eventually.
DeGaulle and Chirac launched their assault on 15 August 1971 - The PetroEuro plan torpedoed by Nixon's Kissinger Class.

The Kindleburger Trap is best comprehended if you begin with The Fall of Constantinople 1553.
The Church historically provided the Greatest Public Goods+Services = Schools + Hospitals.
The British Empire enhanced the domain of Public Infrastructure Assets - and incubated The Anglosphere.
The Thucydides Trap for Great Britain did not prevent The Fall of Constantinople 1553.
The Kindleburger Trap in The Cold War did not prevent The Fall of USSR 1991.

The Anglosphere can overcome both The Traps - Strength always comes from Defense.
The possibility of victory - when The Challengers fail in strengthening their Defences, and launch assaults instead.
The Fall of USSR 1991 was as inevitable as The Fall of Constantinople 1553.
Hide your strength, bide your time - Deng XiaoPing, Paramount Leader of China 1978.
- jagjeet sinha Jan 12, 2017
  
  Errata : Para 3, Last Line to read as follows -
  The Kindleberger Trap during The Cold War perhaps facilitated The Fall of USSR 1991.
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j. von Hettlingen Jan 10, 2017

Joseph S. Nye warns against "two major traps" that history has set for Trump. While the "Thucydides Trap" would be Trump's headache, the author says he should also look out for a "Kindleberger Trap."
The "Thucydides Trap" is a popular expression that depicts a stressful situation in which a rapidly rising power - like China - causes fear in an established rival like the US, that escalates to war. Indeed, China wants a bigger say in how the world is managed and the US holds onto the status quo.
The "Kindleberger Trap" is a term coined by the author, who says China "seems too weak rather than too strong." Charles Kindleberger, "an intellectual architect of the Marshall Plan" explained in his book, "The World in Depression 1928-1939" that avoiding a crisis - and when failing to avoid one, successfully exiting from it – requires leadership. This requires leadership by a country with the power of the purse and the willingness to use it.
Nye says the "disastrous decade of the 1930s" was the reluctance of the US - after "replaced Britain as the largest global power," failed to provide leadership and helped resolve the crisis. "The result was the collapse of the global system into depression, genocide, and world war." Nye's question is whether China, the rising power would "help provide global public goods?" Some do worry that Beijing "will free ride rather than contribute to an international order that it did not create."
Before Xi Jinping came to power, China used to see itself as a developping country. But now it certainly sees itself as America's equal partner on the global stage. While Beijing seeks to challenge the current liberal world order - Pax Americana - created after World War II, it has hugely benefited from the global public goods - "a stable climate, financial stability, or freedom of the seas" the US and its allies provide. The author fears if the US turned inward, China might not be able to take the helm, which would lead to a world of chaos.
America may scale down its role as provider of global public goods under Trump, who as a businessman hates free riders. He made it clear during the campaign that US allies and other small countries would have to pay for it. The author believes, "if pressed and isolated by Trump’s policy, however, will China become a disruptive free rider that pushes the world into a Kindleberger Trap." Regardless of free riding mentality among smaller countries, the author points out the danger of having global public goods "under-produced. When Britain became too weak to play that role after World War I, an isolationist US continued to be a free rider, with disastrous results."
The other threat is the Thucydides Trap - "a China that seems too strong rather than too weak." The 2,500-year-old Greek historian, Thucydides wrote: "What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta." The author illustrates several examples in history that relate to the "Thucydides Trap" - tensions among imperial powers in Europe, that led to World War One.
The author highlights "the danger that Trump confronts with China today. He must worry about a China that is simultaneously too weak and too strong. To achieve his objectives, he must avoid the Kindleberger trap as well as the Thucydides trap. But, above all, he must avoid the miscalculations, misperceptions, and rash judgments that plague human history." The problem with Trump is that he lacks the intellect and political acumen. He is thin-skinned and impetuous.
No doubt Xi Jinping will show Trump what leadership is all about. In his speech in Seattle in September 2015, he tackled the threat of the two nations' strategic rivalry head on:
"There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides trap in the world. But should major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might create such traps for themselves."
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Ken Verrett Jan 10, 2017

The US needs a POTUS on the order of Nixon and a Sec of State like Kissinger. We don't appear to have that POTUS but it remains th be seen if a Sec of State has and can project a long term vision. Nothing to do but wait and see...
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Jose araujo Jan 10, 2017

I honestly don't see any imperialistic desires both on Trump nor on China.

Nobody can win a nuclear war, that's the beauty of it
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Michael Public Jan 10, 2017

Article seems to exist in a theoretical reality. An American-Chinese war is not going to happen. The US has 2000 nuclear weapons and the Chinese an estimated 400. If even only 40 reached their targets inside mainland USA the country would be reduced no more than a bunch of rednecks trying to farm mushrooms under the ash clouds of burnt cities. China would probably end up with a population of zero. Ergo, there is not going to be a war.
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Yoshimichi Moriyama Jan 10, 2017

China has undoubtedly benefited from international institutions which were founded and maintained by the West, but it has been unwilling to share the political burdens and costs to keep them going except when doing so lets it shine in the limelight; it wants to stand out in these institutions; but it has the desire to replace them with or turn them into more Sino-centric ones in the long run.

AIIB was the Chinese attempt to take the place of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), to export China's over-supplied labor and iron and to let the world bathe in Chinese political and cultural glory, but it has not made any success because it has failed to collect funds and because it does not have good know-how of where and on what projects to put the money without incurring losses. It made three small contracts last year, all on the advice of ADB. Though not reported by the People's Daily and the Global News, China has been asking Japan, under the table of course, to take part in AIIB.

President Obama's failure in his East Asian policy came from his thought that simply displaying US forces would be enougj to deter China in the South China Sea, but Xi Jinping knew much better because he clearly saw that those forces were just for show and that there was no reason for him to be afraid of them.
The Chinese strategy of "bit by bit" can be countered by the same "bit by bit," not by "outright all at once."
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Jeremy Edwards Jan 9, 2017

China's national ambitions are not the problem. America's projection of world hegemony through military power is a much greater threat. America, and all other world powers, should seek a cooperative, multi-polar global power structure, which is the only just future we can build, and consequently the only path to world peace.
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Cal Bengoshi Jan 9, 2017

I think it would be a serious error to base future policy decisions on Kindleberger's theory regarding the cause of the Great Depression of 1929-1940 when that theory does not explain either the prior "Long Depression" of 1873-1896 or the more recent "Great Recession" of 2007-2011.

Rather than focusing on "global public goods," I think the US should focus on what is likely to benefit the US in the long term.

IMO, an objective analysis in each of the US and China is likely to lead to the conclusion that certain policies will benefit both countries while others will benefit one but not the other, and still others will benefit one of them while harming the other.

As to those policies likely to benefit both countries, cooperation would appear to be the logical course of action. As to those likely to benefit only one of them without significant risk of harm to the other, I think it is logical to assume that the country likely to be benefited will follow those policies, also.

The real problem rests with those policies that, if put into effect, are likely to benefit only one of China and the US while harming the other. These, I think, are the ones to avoid because they contain the greatest risk for causing a confrontation between China and the US that could endanger not only both the US and China but the rest of the world.
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