Debate Topic
Resolved: that the relationship between the United States and China today resembles more nearly the relationship of Britain to the United States at the time of Britain’s imperial supremacy than it does the relationship of Britain to Germany during that same period.
Discuss.
Is China now as endowed with natural resources to the degree that the US was then?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 11, 05:12 PM · #
Understanding that sentence gives me a headache, and yet I studied 19th century European history in college.
If by that you mean that we are less on a war footing and more in a sort of bizarre symbiotic economic relationship, then yes. I vote with the House.
— PEG · Sep 11, 05:26 PM · #
But PEG: Germany and the UK too were in a symbiotic economic relationship prior to 1914 (each others’ second or third biggest trading partners, I believe).
As to the original question. Any historical analogy is imperfect, but this seems misleading. First of all, are we talking 1860 or 1910 here? The British were at the peak of their power in 1860, but then Prussia was still nearly a backwater, not a world power. If we are talking 1910, the UK was way past its peak, and economically far surpassed by both Germany and the US.
Anyway, the US and the UK never came to blows because they were far apart and didn’t really have any real competing interests that were worth fighting a war over. Salisbury realized this, and that’s why he didn’t let the Venezuelan crisis escalate. The UK and Germany had real, competing interests on the European mainland – the UK in not letting any hegemon develop on the Continent, Germany thinking it could only be secure if it was a hegemon.
In that respect, the UK-Germany analogy seems to correspond much closer to the US-China relationship than a UK-US analogy. The US guarantees the security of South Korea, Japan, etc, just as Britain guaranteed the integrity of Belgium. And China is surrounded by at least potentially hostile powers, just as Germany was.
So no, not resolved. Sorry Noah.
— Magnus · Sep 11, 06:16 PM · #
Magnus: 1910 would bias the question toward imminent war and be too far into British decline, but that doesn’t mean we have to go back to 1860. 1875, post Franco-Prussian War, would probably work just fine….
— Aaron · Sep 11, 07:13 PM · #
Aaron: yeah, in my own mind I was thinking around the 1880s.
— Noah Millman · Sep 11, 07:24 PM · #
But 1880s or 1910s: The point about serious diverging interests remains the same, no?
— Magnus · Sep 11, 07:49 PM · #
I appreciate what you are trying to say, and on balance I agree with your claim. But I just want to throw out some countervailing considerations that complicate things a bit:
1:Naval power
The United States currently plays the same role on the worlds’ sealanes as Britain did during the relevant time period Our navy, like theirs of old, possesses unquestioned blue-water dominance. In contrast, China, like Germany, is a nation of considerable—perhaps even superior—military strength on land. Furthermore, China’s ability to project this strength into the arena of world power politics is severely undercut by their naval weakness. Germany suffered this same problem. In both cases, this weakness is of long standing—neither China nor Germany are traditional naval powers. In both cases, their naval inferiority impinges on critical strategic interests. For Germany, it led to both the blockades and the repeated inability to sever the northatlantic US-UK lifeline. For China, among other things, it castrates them on Taiwan and means that the US can operate with impunity in supporting a whole host of near neighbors(Korea, for one) which China has historically considered subordinate.
Now, obviously this analogy runs into problems in that China hasn’t mounted a bid to challenge US supremacy. The PLAN has been modernizing, but I don’t think anyone reasonable expects them to start laying keels for dreadnoughts in the immediate future. But still, in both cases the balance of naval power is enormously powerful in defining the strategic environment in which the various powers had to work. The fact that a similarly disparate balance of power pushed the UK and Germany towards conflict has to be considered.
2:Resources
Germany then and China now are also similar in having rapidly growing economies which were ravenous for natural resources. Additionally, in both cases they face a global superpower who seems to have “gobbled up” much of the available resources. For Germany, the need to compete with Britain in empire building in order to secure resources to feed the Rhineland was a perennial fixture in prewar Germany strategy. For China, you have an economy so desperate for raw materials they are cutting deals with everyone, especially countries the US doesn’t want to deal with for whatever reason. As far as I know, England and the US never really competed over resources, not heavily at least. Especially in the case of oil/energy, it’s depressingly easy to see how US/China relations could start looking a lot more like UK/Germany rather than UK/US.
Just to reiterate, I think the factors favoring Noah’s resolution are stronger—the symbiotic economy, the “wild west” gunslinging economy, etc. I’m just brewing up some things that could point the other way.
— salacious · Sep 11, 07:56 PM · #
If China had a lot of inhabitants who were proud of their American heritage and who viewed American ideas about politics, religion and culture as the foundation of their own politics, religion and culture, and if America had a lot of inhabitants (not just Thomas Friedman) at all socio-economic levels who greatly admired Chinese politics and culture, gave lots of thought to immigrating there, and often did immigrate there, then I would find this statement pretty persuasive. As it is, not so much.
— y81 · Sep 11, 08:59 PM · #
hard to say, I don’t think you can have a proper answer on this for another couple of decades. It took more than 40 years between the emergence of Germany as the premier military power in Europe and the eruption of WWI. Lets not forget that the Great Illusion was written in 1909 stating the impossibillity of war among the great powers because of economic interdependence. It is very well possible that no war will ever erupt between China or the US but there will not be any “special relationship”.
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