This chapter considers the relevance of postcolonialism to the discipline of ‘international relations’ (IR). It argues that postcolonialism advances a powerful critique of traditional approaches to IR (see chapters on realism and liberalism) since it calls into question the discipline’s foundational ontological and epistemological assumptions. In particular, it challenges the dominant assumption that states are the basic units of IR and that we should examine the relations between these units in the context of an anarchical system. Postcolonialism refocuses our attention on the constitutive role played by colonialism in the creation of the modern world and sees international relations as hierarchical rather than anarchical. It sees academic disciplines such as IR – and Western rationalist, humanist and universalist modes of thinking in general – as complicit in reproducing colonial power relations and seeks normatively to resist practices of colonialism in its material and ideational forms, whether political, economic or cultural.

Introduction

Chapter 3 provided both a conceptual and chronological account of US and Chinese grand strategies. It showed that while the drivers of both vectors have caused much friction over the decades, since 1972, there has also been a marriage of convenience between Washington and Beijing. Coherent with the idea of coopetition presented in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 then continued with a history of US– China relations from rapprochement until the very early days of the Obama administration. One of the main takeaway points from this historical inquiry was that both the US and China were able to overcome serious challenges to the relationship in the name of a pragmatism informed by national and global economic interests. This chronological account went up to the end of the 2000s.

In contrast to Chapter 3, this and the following chapter proceed more thematically and less chronologically. In this way, it will be possible to capture some key developments that define US– China relations in the 2010s and that signal a shift from the previous decades – at least compared to the first 20 years that followed the Cold War. Given that this book contributes to current debates in international politics as opposed to history- focused discussions, this allows a more in- depth approach to some of the key issues. The historical part of the previous chapter provided the context to current events, drawing out the implications of the economy– security conundrum (ESC); the aim was to make sense of current developments, as did Chapters 1 and 2.

Reflecting on US– China relations, Joseph Nye wrote in the Financial Times that ‘[e] conomic exchange can produce welfare gains for both sides, but it can also be used as a strategic weapon’ (Nye 2020b). His words capture the message of this chapter. For the sake of clarity, it is important to note that a comprehensive study on the economic interdependence between the US and China is beyond the scope of this book. There are three interrelated reasons for this. Firstly, an in- depth exploration of this relationship would require an economic focus that is too technical for the book's area of interest, which remains a more IR- related one.

Why the relationship between the US and China Matters

On 18– 19 March 2021, the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met senior Chinese officials, including Blinken's counterpart Wang Yi, at a summit in Anchorage. Observers from all over the world hoped that bilateral relations would improve after their deterioration under the previous administration of Donald J. Trump. Instead, the Anchorage summit was an ill- tempered one characterized by US protests over repression in Hong Kong and the persecution of Xinjiang's Uighur population, and Chinese rebukes over the US’ domineering and hegemonic behaviour. This meeting indicated that worsening diplomatic relations between Washington DC and Beijing were not purely the product of Trump's ‘America First’ agenda (let alone his erratic conduct of foreign affairs and his often racist and Sinophobic outbursts on camera and on Twitter); there were also structural factors behind Sino- American tensions and the relationship between the US and China was now comparable to that between the US and the Soviet Union during the latter half of the 20th century (McCurry 2021; BBC Two 2021). This was confirmed by the recent Interim National Security Strategy, in which Biden argued that China ‘is the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system’ (The White House 2021, 8). Indeed, the Anchorage fallout was not the only one in the post- Trump era. In December of the same year, at the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Biden administration announced a diplomatic boycott as a reaction to China's ongoing ‘genocide’ and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses, to which the Chinese authorities responded that US diplomats were not even invited in the first place. In the summer of 2022, the US and China were involved in what became known as the fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis, when the People's Liberation Army responded to a visit to Taiwan by the Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi with a show of force around and in proximity of the island.

Introduction

The previous chapter explored the economic relationship between the US and China. It was argued that this is an important driver for restraint that keeps the competition between Washington and Beijing ‘cold’. However, it was also noted that this is a cause of frictions between the two great powers, and that throughout the 2010s both countries took steps for preparing to decouple – to a degree. It was suggested that because interdependence has become a cause of concern in both Washington and Beijing, decoupling might represent a healthy development for the relationship. Yet, this does not necessarily mean that different kinds of frictions could not arise from a decreased level of interaction.

This chapter will take a similar approach to the previous one, regarding how these fit into the rest of the book. The focus will also be on the 2010s and the very early 2020s. The role of this chapter in the wider book is to zoom in on the most competitive if not conflictual dynamics of the relationship between the US and China, while emphasizing that even within this sphere there are limits to confrontation. This chapter will argue that US– China relations in the 2010s – and this still continues to apply today – were progressively militarily conflictual within the First Island Chain; yet, when moving away from this confined region, military tensions declined. This is because China lacks the necessary strategic depth to challenge US power, in addition to an interest for taking international leadership responsibilities. To an extent, throughout the 2010s the US was also seeking to deter China in a cautious manner, especially during the Obama years, or was facing the challenge of dealing with allies that were not convinced about the idea of containing China militarily – as was the case with India's membership in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad). At the same time, while the possibility of war between the US and China was always remote if one considers the geography of the whole world, it is true that the stakes within the First Island Chain were high. This condition has not changed in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine and, if anything, it might have worsened.

Introduction

The last two chapters reflected on the complexity of US– China relations, zooming in on their economic and geopolitical dimensions. It emerged from the analysis that in both dimensions there are multiple factors of competition and restraint together with areas of stability and potential instability.

This chapter provides a macro- level view of the structural diplomatic implications of tensions described in Chapters 4 and 5. It also seeks to draw the book to a close by providing an empirical representation of what geopolitical blocs may look like at a time when both the US and China have grown dissatisfied with the liberal international order (LIO) and seek to change it as we approach the middle of the decade. In addition to this, the chapter seeks to make sense of whether there is a relationship between the Cold War and the new type of cold war.

Overall, the argument of this chapter is that the international order shows tangible signs that it is moving towards the return to bloc politics, with the strengthening of a Western bloc and the potential rise of an Eastern bloc. While the Western bloc is a cohesive yet small entity, which has realized since the war in Ukraine that much of the world is unpersuaded by its narrative, the Eastern bloc could potentially represent a greater number of people, but it is unlikely to achieve a level of political cohesion similar to the one seen in the transatlantic region in the post- Second World War era. Part of the issue, it is argued, is the lack of a recognized leader in Asia and the fact that China is not keen to make formal alliances. Such a scenario dangerously reinforces a security dilemma at a time when the US and China appear to be developing irreconcilable narratives about world politics. However, two caveats need to be taken into consideration. Firstly, it cannot be predicted to what extent blocs will deepen their political and military cohesion; secondly, these blocs will not be the same as those that characterized the Cold War, not only because China is the most powerful country in the eventual Eastern bloc, but also because at a time of globalization, political integration manifests in different ways.

Introduction

The previous chapter taken on its own might be seen as a set of historicallyinformed, but abstract, reflections on the Cold War. But, in the context of this book, Chapter 1 represents a very necessary stage aimed at defining the key concept in the book. Deconstructing the Cold War is not just an academic exercise; it is key to have an in- depth account using not a comparative but rather a conceptual lens, to ensure academic rigour throughout the book and allow a historical analogy to be made. Many scholars and commentators nowadays challenge the idea that there might be a New Cold War between the US and China, therefore, Chapter 1 confirmed that this term – often undefined in scholarly accounts of the New Cold War – is not used superficially but with an awareness of the implications of doing so, of the historical- academic background of the concept, and of its strengths and weaknesses. An indisputable observation about the Cold War which emerged from Chapter 1 is the fact that there was a coexistence of competitive, if not confrontational, drivers with factors of restraint, or even cooperation, that means a vector of high competition remains cold as opposed to evolving into a waged war. These factors, furthermore, coexist in a systemic context, in the sense that relations between competing actors are framed by international structures – large geopolitical blocs of alliances, multilateral institutions, globalization – but also in the sense that their actions could have system- changing implications.

In light of this, this chapter translates the main findings of the previous chapter – that is, the forementioned coexistence of tendencies towards conflict with cooperation or restraints – into the language of International Relations (IR) theory. This task is necessary for one important reason: it allows content that is not contemporary and is predominantly the subject of historical analysis to be made more manageable for those working in contemporary IR. It means being able to interact with literature not only on IR but also, and above all, with those studying current US– China relations, by moving from the abstract to the empirical through different stages.

Introduction

The previous chapter sought to investigate whether mainstream International Relations (IR) theories provide a sufficient tool with which to appreciate a rare phenomenon in world politics and history, that is, the coexistence of competition and cooperation (coupled with restraint) between two rival great powers. It concluded that while they offer important insights, they do not specifically focus on what was defined as ‘coopetition’. Therefore, a theoretical perspective for best appreciating current US– China coopetition, which draws on the structural contradiction of the liberal order, was put forward. A review of the literature of US– China relations and of the debate on the New Cold War was carried out; it was shown that a new type of cold war exists between the US and China, one that manifests features not just of the Cold War – from which it differs greatly – but also of cold wars.

Considering this, Chapter 3 will zoom in on the conceptual and historical fundamentals of US– China relations. This is necessary to equip the reader with more precise tools to understand the contradictory coexistence of cooperation and competition, and of economic and security interests, as was shown in the previous chapter. While the liberal international order (LIO) provides the context to these contradictions, this chapter shows that US and Chinese grand strategies, over many decades, have come to embody such a tension, as they sought in very different ways to rise and master international relations in a world order deeply impacted by capitalism. Consequently, this tension has emerged in the contemporary history of US– China diplomatic relations, that is, since 1972 until today, when Washington and Beijing were capable of making major steps forward from both an economic and diplomatic perspective while important differences, for instance on political systems and on Taiwan, remained.

The rest of the chapter is organized in the following manner: the first section analyses the making of US grand strategy from a historical perspective. It argues that US grand strategy had a gestation period which lasted from the early 19th century to the end of the Second World War, during which the power projection of the US expanded as its interests overseas grew.

Introduction

It is generally believed that for those born after the Second World War, few moments in history have appeared to offer the certainty and, in some respects, stability as the Cold War. This statement may be misleading because approximately 55 out of the 80 years since the end of hostilities in 1945 were years of the Cold War (1947– 1991). In hindsight, the Cold War was characterized by a high degree of uncertainty, as there were times when a nuclear war might have started, such as during the Cuban Missile Crisis; it was also the backdrop to much domestic instability and, aside from proxy wars, many covert and illegal operations aimed at supporting one or the other side of a conflict. Yet, the two blocs and the ideological confrontation made international affairs look simple:

Part of the problem was also a comparative one. The 1990s replaced the Cold War with a disorderly clash of civilizations, in which threats could come from many sources and parts of the world. Samuel Huntington, for instance, argued that ‘the fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future’ (Huntington 1993, 22). Zygmunt Bauman saw the world order from a diametrically opposed perspective to that of bipolarity, one he defined as ‘liquid modernity’ (2000, 2). Looking at the Cold War through this lens, according to Hanhimaki (2014, 674), was also a ‘poor – instrumentalist – reading of history’. Some might argue, however, that it was a necessary simplification, because intellectuals must ultimately provide a tangible synthesis of the complexity to fulfil their social mission of sharing knowledge.

This book has sought to make sense of the contemporary relationship between the US and China. While this has become a hot topic discussed in many fora by an increasing number of pundits, it continues to be a complex phenomenon in international politics, in as far as this relationship is characterized by deep economic interdependence and major security concerns. Before Trump was elected president of the US in 2016, however, the academic debate on US– China relations was not as lively as it is today. There has been an acceleration of production as the two countries are entering a security dilemma whose influence will be a challenge to escape; in parallel to this, many pundits have been deploying the phrase New Cold War as they see many similarities with the confrontation that involved the West and the East between 1947 and 1991. Therefore, this book has attempted to both disentangle the crux of the problem of US– China relations and, at the same time, to contribute to the most recent academic discussions on the topic.

With the majority of the debate leading to a polarization between those who see the concept of a New Cold War accurately reflecting US– China relations and those who find it methodologically flawed, and with a group of middle- ground contributions which remain undeveloped, this book has sought to contribute to the latter from a different perspective. Firstly, contrary to any other contribution, it provided a thorough conceptual analysis of the Cold War. Secondly, it intentionally avoided a comparative analysis between the Cold War and the New Cold War, acknowledging that this would involve too many important differences and similarities to be of any rigorous value. However, by deconstructing and defining both the Cold War and cold wars in Chapter 1, it provided the required tools to infer abstract features of the Cold War that could be considered when studying US– China relations or any other great powers’ cold war. From this analysis it was evident that more attention needed to be put on the fact that the relationship between the US and China displays both a tendency towards competition while falling short of direct confrontation and a tendency towards economic cooperation which, at the same time, has been the cause of frictions between the two great powers.

As per Leadership Trait Analysis convention, the following profile of Donald Trump is based on 100 spontaneous statements comprising some 52,000 words. The statements were made in front of different audiences, cover different substantive areas, and come from different phases of his tenure in office.

This chapter introduces a “leader-centered theory of foreign policy change.” The theory seeks to account for the independent, systematic, and predictable effect of leaders in bringing about major changes in a country's foreign policy, in the sense of broader redirections that entail multiple decisions spanning different issue areas. More specifically, the theory explores the possible effect of leaders on the “why,” the “what,” and the “how” of foreign policy change in terms of:

• • the reasons due to which leaders try to fundamentally redirect their countries’ foreign policy, which is henceforth referred to as “triggering change”;

• • the substantive direction in which leaders seek to change foreign policy, which is henceforth referred to as “guiding change”; and

• • the actions that leaders undertake to bring about change in the domestic political arena, which is henceforth referred to as “implementing change.”

The theory is distinct from alternative explanatory frameworks in that it evolves around individual leaders and at the same time systemically incorporates insights from the public policy literature.

The first key feature of the theory is its explicit focus on leaders as key “change agents” (Hermann, 1990). Indeed, most analytical frameworks in Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) that seek to account for foreign policy change bring together an array of structural and actor- oriented explanatory factors (for example, Holsti, 1982; Hermann, 1990; Rosati, 1994; Gustavsson, 1999; Welch, 2005; Blavoukos and Bourantonis, 2014; Joly and Haesebrouck, 2021; see also Chapter One of this volume). As a result, it is all but impossible to ascertain any independent and systematic effect that leaders might have on foreign policy change. The leader- centered theory outlined in this chapter offers an alternative perspective that conceptualizes individual decision makers as being crucial for the initiation, direction, and implementation of foreign policy change.

The second key feature is that the theory draws heavily on insights from the field of public policy. The first strand of literature that the theory incorporates is the one on policy failures (for example, Marsh and McConnell, 2010; Bovens and 't Hart, 2016; McConnell, 2016).