***Japan ECS Neg: Compiled 9-30-20****
***Japan ECS Neg: Compiled 9-30-20****Opening PacketNo Senkakus WarJapan will give up—no interest in military conflictNewsham, senior research fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, August 12, 2020 (Grant Newsham, 8-12-2020, "Why Japan may cede the Senkakus to China," Asia Times, , DoA 8/19/2020, DVOG) The People’s Republic of China is turning up the heat around Japan’s Senkaku Islands, which the Chinese also claim and call the Diaoyu Islands.It is challenging Japanese control and has warned Tokyo not to complain the next time a host of Chinese fishing boats swarm the area with Chinese Coast Guard and PLA Navy ships providing cover.And this is likely to happen sooner rather than later.Japan’s defense minister, Taro Kono,?said at an early August news conference?that the Japanese Self Defense Forces (JSDF) “will act firmly when necessary while joining hands with the Japan Coast Guard.”Kono declined to provide details, saying: “We do not want to show our cards.”Many Western observers have long assumed that if backed into a corner Japan would fight – despite its reticence about things military. The prospect of losing territory to the Chinese is presumably such a corner.And despite their shortcomings, the Self Defense Forces – particularly the Maritime Self Defense Force (MSDF) with its highly professional surface, submarine and anti-submarine forces – have the capability to bloody an opponent’s nose.But maybe the assumption is wrong.It could be that in Japan – or, better said, in those parts of its ruling political and business classes that make such decisions – there is no intention of “going kinetic” to defend the Senkakus.If the Chinese presence becomes overwhelming, Tokyo may simply cede the area to the PRC. It would complain of course, but would it shoot? Or would it reckon that the cost of military confrontation with China would far exceed the value of “some rocks”?Far-fetched? Maybe not.A recently retired JSDF officer, unprompted, recently confided his belief that, even if the Senkaku?Islands are invaded by China,?the “Japanese government will not choose war.”He expained: “I’m very sorry but Japanese statesmen think?these affairs” – in this case he was referring both to the Senkakus and the South Korean-controlled Takeshima Islands – “are?not military matters but political matters.”I take his point. The Japanese would sort of resist but my own guess is that, if the only way to remove the Chinese were to shoot, Japan wouldn’t do it.This assumes the Chinese don’t start shooting first. If China just comes in and parks itself and even lands some people on the Senkakus and says, “wuddyugonnadoaboutit?,” the government of Japan just might do nothing much.Recall that the Barack Obama administration allowed the PRC to take de facto control of the South China Sea without putting up a fight – or much of an argument. And back then the US military still had the advantage over the People’s Liberation Army.There are of course Japanese – including factions in the ruling LDP and most members of the JSDF – who think Japan should defend all of the territories it claims. But there were also Americans who thought Obama should forcefully defend US partners and interests in East Asia in the 2010s.?If letting go is what Japan’s leaders are thinking of doing, they can’t exactly publicly declare it. For one thing, Japan’s public might be outraged – if public opinion polls, overwhelmingly negative toward China, are anything to go by.But the citizenry doesn’t always matter much in Japan and the government can always simply say, after the fact, “Shoganai” – it couldn’t be helped.?One suspects that Japan Inc might be in the “Senkakus aren’t worth a war” camp. The?Abe administration recently allotted US$2 billion?to help Japanese companies move operations out of China.However, a Japanese friend whom I trust told me the other day that Keidanren – Japan’s powerful business federation – is soon to issue a call for deeper economic ties with China, while citing the PRC’s post-Corona V-shaped recovery.Toyota, Japan’s leading company, is?planning to go all-in on electric vehicle production in China.There is a precedent for Japanese business interests shaping defense policy. In 2012 anti-Japanese riots broke out in China – over the Senkakus – and targeted a Japanese supermarket chain’s stores in the PRC.Around the same time, a prominent official close to Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda convinced the leader to?cancel an upcoming amphibious exercise near Okinawa?that I was directly involved with after the Chinese complained. The official’s family owned?the stores being targeted in China.No doubt this isn’t unique to Japan. Wall Street and the American business community have pressured successive US administrations to accommodate the PRC for decades.In fairness, Japan is not ignoring defense. But it almost seems to be going through the motions – hoping China is somehow frightened off or loses interest.??Defense spending doesn’t increase much. Recruitment is lackluster. The services can’t easily operate together.Japan’s home-built stealth fighter is scheduled for operations?in 2035.?And the government still can’t figure out missile defense – or offense.Closer to the Senkakus, the GSDF is fortifying several of Japan’s southern islands and is in the process of installing anti-ship missiles and anti-aircraft systems. The MSDF and Japan Coast Guard diligently patrol near the Senkakus, and the Japan Air Self Defense Force intercepts intruding PLA jets intruding into Japanese airspace.??However, these activities are disjointed and reactive rather than part of a coherent defense scheme. And Japanese forces are increasingly outmatched numbers-wise by Chinese ships and aircraft.?Nor is Senkaku defense a fully joint US-Japan effort, even though the need has been obvious for years.If Japan does give up the Senkakus it may avoid an immediate problem, from Tokyo’s perspective – but that won’t be the end of Chinese demands.??And where would this leave the Americans?US forces have operated on the assumption that each side will do its part to defend Japan’s territorial integrity.Cede the Senkakus and it raises doubts about Japanese reliability and commitment, as well as complicating US and Japanese military operations in the East China Sea and beyond.And the Americans might reasonably ask: Are there other parts of Japan you intend to give away? Or other instances where you will stand down?If the new American ambassador ever does arrive in Tokyo, his first order of business should be to ask the Japanese what they have in mind for the Senkakus.??After 60 years of alliance, one would think both sides would know by now.No Senkakus escalation or draw-inYoel Sano 15, Head of Global & Political Security Risk, BMI Research, 8/25/15, “WHY GREAT POWER CONFLICT RISK IS RISING,” dispute over Senkaku Islands: Any conflict between the world's second- and third-largest economies could pave the way for a wider conflagration. The US is committed by treaty to Japan's defense and could get dragged into a conflict with China, in the event that Tokyo and Beijing came to blows over the disputed Senkaku Islands (called Diaoyu in Chinese) in the East China Sea. In practice, though, the somewhat peripheral nature of these tiny, uninhabited islands to Japan and China means that both sides would probably contain any fighting there to the immediate vicinity. In other words, a Sino-Japanese conflict would largely be a naval one, similar to the 1982 Argentina-UK Falklands War, and would not necessarily see military strikes on their respective homelands. In BMI’s view, the US would not directly intervene in a Senkaku conflict due to the risks involved - i.e. a shooting war with China - but would provide Japan with logistical support.No China-Japan WarNo china japan warMoss, 13 (Trefor, former Asia-Pacific editor at Jane's Defence Weekly, 2/10, “7 Reasons China and Japan Won’t Go To War”, The Diplomat, )The sequel seldom improves on the original. Yet Shinzo Abe, Japan’s newly re-elected prime minister, has already displayed more conviction during his second spell at the Kantei than in the entire year of his first, unhappy premiership. Political energy is a plus only when it’s wisely deployed however, and some fear that Abe is picking a fight he can’t win when it comes to his hardline stance on China. Rather than attempting to soothe the tensions that built between Beijing and Tokyo in 2012, Abe has struck a combative tone, especially concerning their dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands – a keystone for nationalists in both countries. Each time fighter aircraft are scrambled or ships are sent to survey the likely flashpoint, we hear more warnings about the approach of a war that China and Japan now seem almost eager to wage. The Economist, for example,recently observed that, “China and Japan are sliding towards war,” while Hugh White of the Australian National University warned his readers: “Don't be too surprised if the U.S. and Japan go to war with China [in 2013].” News this week of another reckless act of escalation – Chinese naval vessels twice training their radars on their Japanese counterparts – will only have ratcheted up their concerns. These doomful predictions came as Abe set out his vision of a more hard-nosed Japan that will no longer be pushed around when it comes to sovereignty issues. In his December op-ed on Project Syndicate Abe accused Beijing of performing “daily exercises in coercion” and advocated a “democratic security diamond” comprising Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. (rehashing a concept from the 2007 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue). He then proposed defense spending increases – Japan’s first in a decade – and strengthened security relations with the Philippines and Vietnam, which both share Tokyo’s misgivings about China’s intentions. An alliance-affirming trip to the U.S.is expected soon, and there is talk of Japan stationing F-15s on Shimojijima, close to the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. However, Abe would argue that he is acting to strengthen Japan in order to balance a rising China and prevent a conflict, rather than creating the conditions for one. And he undoubtedly has a more sanguine view of the future of Sino-Japanese relations than those who see war as an ever more likely outcome. Of course, there is a chance that Chinese and Japanese ships or aircraft will clash as the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands rumbles on; and, if they do, there is a chance that a skirmish could snowball unpredictably into a wider conflict. But if Shinzo Abe is gambling with the region’s security, he is at least playing the odds. He is calculating that Japan can pursue a more muscular foreign policy without triggering a catastrophic backlash from China, based on the numerous constraints that shape Chinese actions, as well as the interlocking structure of the globalized environment which the two countries co-inhabit. Specifically, there are seven reasons to think that war is a very unlikely prospect, even with a more hawkish prime minister running Japan: Beijing’s nightmare scenario. China might well win a war against Japan, but defeat would also be a very real possibility. As China closes the book on its “century of humiliation” and looks ahead to prouder times, the prospect of a new, avoidable humiliation at the hands of its most bitter enemy is enough to persuade Beijing to do everything it can to prevent tha t outcome (the surest way being not to have a war at all). Certainly, China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, does not want to go down in history as the man who led China into a disastrous conflict with the Japanese. In that scenario, Xi would be doomed politically, and, as China’s angry nationalism turned inward, the Communist Party probably wouldn’t survive either. 2. Economic interdependence. Win or lose, a Sino-Japanese war would be disastrous for both participants. The flagging economy that Abe is trying to breathe life into with a $117 billion stimulus package would take a battering as the lucrative China market was closed off to Japanese business. China would suffer, too, as Japanese companies pulled out of a now-hostile market, depriving up to 5 million Chinese workers of their jobs, even as Xi Jinping looks to double per capita income by 2020. Panic in the globalized economy would further depress both economies, and potentially destroy the programs of both countries’ new leaders. 3. Question marks over the PLA’s operational effectiveness.The People’s Liberation Army is rapidly modernizing, but there are concerns about how effective it would prove if pressed into combat today – not least within China’s own military hierarchy. New Central Military Commission Vice-Chairman Xu Qiliang recently told the PLA Daily that too many PLA exercises are merely for show, and that new elite units had to be formed if China wanted to protect its interests. CMC Chairman Xi Jinping has also called on the PLA to improve its readiness for “real combat.” Other weaknesses within the PLA, such as endemic corruption, would similarly undermine the leadership’s confidence in committing it to a risky war with a peer adversary. 4. Unsettled politics. China’s civil and military leaderships remain in a state of flux, with the handover initiated in November not yet complete. As the new leaders find their feet and jockey for position amongst themselves, they will want to avoid big foreign-policy distractions – war with Japan and possibly the U.S. being the biggest of them all. 5. The unknown quantity of U.S. intervention. China has its hawks, such as Dai Xu, who think that the U.S. would never intervene in an Asian conflict on behalf of Japan or any other regional ally. But this view is far too casual. U.S. involvement is a real enough possibility to give China pause, should the chances of conflict increase. 6. China’s policy of avoiding military confrontation. China has always said that it favors peaceful solutions to disputes, and its actions have tended to bear this out. In particular, it continues to usually dispatch unarmed or only lightly armed law enforcement ships to maritime flashpoints, rather than naval ships.There have been calls for a more aggressive policy in the nationalist media, and from some military figures; but Beijing has not shown much sign of heeding them. The PLA Navy made a more active intervention in the dispute this week when one of its frigates trained its radar on a Japanese naval vessel. This was a dangerous and provocative act of escalation, but once again the Chinese action was kept within bounds that made violence unlikely (albeit, needlessly, more likely than before). 7. China’s socialization. China has spent too long telling the world that it poses no threat to peace to turn around and fulfill all the China-bashers’ prophecies. Already, China’s reputation in Southeast Asia has taken a hit over its handling of territorial disputes there. If it were cast as the guilty party in a conflict with Japan –which already has the sympathy of many East Asian countries where tensions China are concerned – China would see regional opinion harden against it further still. This is not what Beijing wants: It seeks to influence regional affairs diplomatically from within, and to realize “win-win” opportunities with its international partners. In light of these constraints, Abe should be able to push back against China – so long as he doesn’t go too far. He was of course dealt a rotten hand by his predecessor, Yoshihiko Noda, whose bungled nationalization of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands triggered last year’s plunge in relations. Noda’s misjudgments raised the political temperature to the point where neither side feels able to make concessions, at least for now, in an attempt to repair relations. However, Abe can make the toxic Noda legacy work in his favor. Domestically, he can play the role of the man elected to untangle the wreckage, empowered by his democratic mandate to seek a new normal in Sino-Japanese relations. Chinese assertiveness would be met with a newfound Japanese assertiveness, restoring balance to the relationship. It is also timely for Japan to push back now, while its military is still a match for China’s. Five or ten years down the line this may no longer be the case, even if Abe finally grows the stagnant defense budget. Meanwhile, Abe is also pursuing diplomatic avenues. It was Abe who mended Japan’s ties with China after the Koizumi years, and he is now trying to reprise his role as peacemaker, having dispatched his coalition partner, Natsuo Yamaguchi, to Beijing reportedly to convey his desire for a new dialogue. It is hardly surprising, given his daunting domestic laundry list, that Xi Jinping should have responded encouragingly to the Japanese olive branch. In the end, Abe and Xi are balancing the same equation: They will not give ground on sovereignty issues, but they have no interest in a war – in fact, they must dread it. Even if a small skirmish between Chinese and Japanese ships or aircraft occurs, the leaders will not order additional forces to join the battle unless they are boxed in by a very specific set of circumstances that makes escalation the only face-saving option. The escalatory spiral into all-out war that some envisage once the first shot is fired is certainly not the likeliest outcome, as recurrent skirmishes elsewhere – such as in Kashmir, or along the Thai-Cambodian border – have demonstrated.Economic interdependence checks warKing, 12 (Amy King – doctoral candidate in International Relations at St Antony’s College, Oxford University, 10/22, “Japan and China: warm trade ties temper political tensions”, East Asia Forum, )The Sino–Japanese relationship is paradoxical.The two countries enjoy major trade and investment ties but also suffer persistent, damaging political rifts. The negative side of the relationship is familiar. Since the late 1980s, Chinese diplomatic rebukes and popular protests over issues relating to the legacy of World War II have become increasingly strident. During Prime Minister Koizumi’s era the Chinese government protested against his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, and opposed Japan’s bid for UN Security Council membership.In more recent years the main source of tension has been territorial disputes over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. In 2010 the Japanese coast guard arrested the captain of a Chinese fishing boat that had allegedly rammed two Japanese coast guard vessels in contested waters. The arrest prompted government protests in China. The Chinese government called off political talks with Japan and temporarily suspended a series of bilateral student exchanges. The response in Japan was chilly. A Yomiuri Shimbun survey published in October 2010 reported that 89 per cent of Japanese believed that the Chinese government ‘went too far’ on the Senkaku/Diaoyu issue. Worse, the survey found that only 13 per cent of Japanese respondents felt any trust in China.Routine political and territorial rifts make it easy to conclude that the Japan–China relationship is dominated by intractable animosity. But the economic connection that has long brought these two states together should not be overlooked. China is Japan’s largest trade partner, and Japan is China’s second-largest trade partner after the US. More importantly, Japan is one of China’s major sources of foreign capital. Over the past decade Japanese foreign direct investment in China has grown tenfold as Japanese firms have shifted their manufacturing operations to China. Both large firms and small- and medium-sized enterprises are part of this trend.Sino–Japanese economic interdependence is set to deepen following the Chinese government’s decision in May 2012 to allow direct convertibility between the yen and the renminbi. This makes the yen the first currency other than the US dollar to establish direct convertibility with the renminbi. As China’s second most important economic partner, Japan was a natural first choice for Beijing, whose efforts to internationalise the renminbi and reduce its reliance on the US dollar have received much publicity in recent months.Sino–Japanese ‘hot economics, cold politics’ make this relationship a poster child for the liberal thesis that economic interdependence is a source of peace.This may seem counterintuitive. After all, the strength of economic ties has not actively improved other aspects of the relationship. However, strong economic interdependence has helped to raise the costs of conflict. Since the end of World War II economic ties have prevented sour political relations from turning into outright conflict. Even during the most difficult years of the Cold War, when the US put pressure on Japan not to trade with ‘Red China’, Japanese and Chinese business leaders, politicians and government officials worked hard to negotiate a set of small, unofficial trade agreements. Even during the worst years of the Cold War era, the two sides relied on economics to build a relationship where politics and diplomacy could not.Yet the ‘hot economics, cold politics’ that have worked so well in sustaining the bilateral relationship for over six decades is based on US primacy in East Asia. This East Asian regional order has allowed Japan to pursue economic engagement with China while being backed up by the security guarantees of a hegemonic US. The rise of China may change all this. Will the paradoxical quality of Sino–Japanese relations be sustained at a time of shifting power relations in East Asia, or is this a new phase in Japan–China relations?There are some worrying signs that the basis of the Japan–China relationship is changing. Both the 2011 and 2012 Defence of Japan: Annual White Paper raised detailed concerns about China’s growing military budget, lack of military transparency and the intensification of China’s military activity in the East and South China Seas. There is also strong and growing concern among the Japanese public over China’s military rise. Polling by Pew Research in 2011 found that 87 per cent of Japanese view China’s growing military strength as a ‘bad thing’ for Japan.Linked to this, more and more Japanese are finding comfort in the US alliance. The Democratic Party of Japan came to power with plans to reach out to China and take a more independent stance toward the US. But support for this approach was lost when the Japanese public grew concerned that the Hatoyama government was taking a cavalier attitude towards the US–Japan alliance. In the last two or three years China’s behaviour has become increasingly provocative, and this has helped to push Japan closer to the US. A 2011 joint statement by the US and Japan explicitly referred to China’s lack of military transparency as an area of mutual concern, and Tokyo and Washington have strengthened their cooperation in areas such as intelligence, missile defence, space security and cyber security.Even more worrying is the development of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a new US-led exclusive economic grouping in the Asia Pacific. Although the TPP is still being developed, the strict standards on intellectual property rights, labour, the environment and the regulation of state-owned enterprises the US is pushing for will make it extremely difficult for China (and other transitional economies) to qualify for membership. Any perception that China is being deliberately locked out of a key regional economic grouping creates a risk that economics will be used to enhance rather than constrain political and strategic tensions between China and its neighbours. So far official statements suggest that Beijing has adopted a wait-and-see attitude toward the TPP, although in late 2011 a Chinese Foreign Ministry official stated that ‘we hope all [trade] mechanisms could remain transparent and inclusive’. China’s official Xinhua news was more blunt: ‘The TPP, which pointedly excludes China, is widely seen as a thinly disguised counterweight to free trade blocs in the region’.Yet there are positive signs that ‘hot economics’ will continue to temper the ‘cold politics’ of the Japan–China relationship. The Japanese government is dragging its feet on the TPP, and it is unlikely that the prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, will be successful in taking on the Japanese agricultural lobby and so enable Japan to join the new economic grouping. At the same time, Japan has strengthened its free trade negotiations with China and South Korea, and the three countries recently concluded an agreement that will deepen trilateral investment. There are also clear signs that despite growing concerns about China’s military rise, the Japanese public continues to support increased and open economic ties with China. In December 2010 an Asahi Shimbun survey found that 64 per cent of Japanese believed that the most important issue in the US–Japan–China relationship was not strengthening the US–Japan alliance against China, but finding ways to deepen the mutually beneficial economic ties between the three countries.Japan and China have long used economics to sustain an otherwise difficult relationship. There are a number of reasons to expect that they will continue to do so for many years to come.China Heg BadChinese hegemony ensures nuclear warLiu 13 [Feng, assistant professor and vice chair of the Department of International Relations at Nankai University, “China, the United States, and the East Asian Security Order,” Issues and Studies 49.1 (Mar 2013): 99-140]The United States' Guarantee of Security Expectations East Asian countries have a long history of suffering from colonial aggression through the modern era, and the region's traditional security challenges remain serious. Because of this, the need for security continues to be one of the top concerns for countries in the region. Since the end of the Cold War, some competitive and complementary security frameworks have emerged in the East Asian security order, such as the regional alliance system led by the United States, the new security concept and regional security cooperation advocated by China,38 and the ASEAN Regional Forum initiated and dominated by the ASEAN countries. The U.S.-led hub-and-spokes system is doubtlessly the most inflectional among these frameworks.39 Since the 1990s, by maintaining a moderate military presence in East Asia, supported by bilateral military alliances and quasi-alliances, and supplemented by a regional multilateral security mechanism, the United States has improved the hub-and-spokes regional security network it constructed during the Cold War. This facilitates Washington's involvement in East Asian regional security affairs. It is worth emphasizing that, regarding the role the United States has played in East Asian security affairs, we should distinguish between "providing a security guarantee/protection" and "stabilizing security expectations." The former refers to the protecting and protected relationship between the security provider and receiver, while the latter does not require this type of relationship between the two sides in the security interaction. Although the United States provides security guarantees to only some countries (namely its allies and security partners) rather than the whole region, it has objectively stabilized the security expectations of most of the countries in the region. In practice, the security system dominated by the United States has served the function of stabilizing the security situation in East Asia. First, for quite a long period after the Cold War, it pacified Japan, the largest economic power in the region, preventing it from taking the leading role in regional security affairs, and reduced other countries' worries about power competition in the region. To many observers, Japan's reluctance to translate its economic muscle into military power has been primarily determined by some domestic constraints, such as Japan's institutional arrangements and pacifist norms.40 However, some analysts have emphasized external factors, especially the role played by the United States. The United States has contributed to Japan's postwar pacifism in at least two interrelated ways: on the one hand, given its alliance with Washington, Japan is willing to ride cheaply, if not completely free of charge, on the United States for national security;41 on the other hand, U.S. protection also prevents Japan from remilitarizing, which in turn has helped mitigate the fears of other countries in the region. As Richard J. Samuels, an expert on Japanese domestic politics, has stated, "without the U.S. military as a 'pacifier,' . . . Japan will become a great (and nuclear armed) power."42 The United States' military presence in East Asia has long won the approval of a number of countries (especially small and medium-sized countries) in the region, as they are worried that Japan and China, the two regional powers, will acquire regional leadership roles. While the United States actively encourages and supports Japan taking additional international responsibility, and even supports Japan becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Washington has restricted Japan's nuclear-weapons development, its attempts to eliminate limits contained in its so-called peace constitution and seek autonomy from the United States, and its desire to play the leading role in Asia. Second, the United States helps to reduce the worries of other East Asian countries concerning the rapid rise of China. The attitude of many of these countries to the acceleration of China's rise since the 1990s has been extremely complicated. On the one hand, China's neighbors have become increasingly dependent on China's rapidly developing economy, and they seek to benefit from it; on the other hand, because of several complex geo- political, strategic, and historical factors, a number of conflicts have arisen between China and its East Asian neighbors over territorial disputes, historical problems, ideological differences, etc., which have further intensified these countries' worries about the rise of China. Given this situation, some countries have attempted to improve their political and military relations with the United States, which has provided excuses for the United States to strengthen its political and military power in the region.43 On the issue of territorial disputes between China and its neighbors, the United States, either explicitly or implicitly, stands with the latter. Take the recent Huangyan Island (also known as Scarborough Shoal) dispute as an example. Although the Americans have reiterated that they "do not take sides on the competing sovereignty claims to land features in the South China Sea," some high level officials have underscored the U.S. commitment to the Philippines under the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) signed in 1951.44 In addition, with arms sales and joint military exercises, the United States has strengthened its military relationship with the Philippines throughout the dispute. Purposeful ambiguity has also been maintained in the case of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute. As tensions between China and Japan have increased in recent months, the United States has insisted that, while it does not take sides, the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan-which commits Washington to protecting territories under the administration of Japan- covers the disputed islands. From a Chinese perspective, the United States does not hold a neutral position on these disputes. M. Taylor Fravel has quite rightly warned that, although the United States does not take sides on the sovereignty claims, its recent effort to reduce tensions "has run the risk that some claimants might be emboldened and that the United States might become unwittingly entrapped."45 China's development is crucial to the maintenance of stability in East Asia and provides an impetus for the economic development of countries in the region. However, as East Asian countries lack mutual trust, some of them may not be confident that China's rise will be a peaceful one, and may attempt to hedge against China by strengthening their relations with the United States. Finally, the United States has also prevented the escalation of crises and the spread of conflicts in the region. There are several complex political, economic, and security issues in East Asia, some of which have escalated into serious crises and conflicts at various times. Out of concern for its own strategic interests, the United States is reluctant to permit disorder in the East Asian security situation and thus attempts to bring some security conflicts under control. For example, from 2003 to 2004, when President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan and his supporters were agitating forcefully on behalf of Taiwan independence and were attempting to change the status quo regarding Taiwan, the George W. Bush administration repeatedly sent envoys to Taiwan and adopted punitive measures to prevent an escalation of tension in the Taiwan Strait.46 President George W. Bush even publicly rebuked the Taiwanese president, stating "the comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status quo, which we oppose."47 This took place because, as Robert Ross noted, "Washington has long considered Taiwan's moves toward independence a threat to U.S. security because they could lead to war."48 Apart from Taiwan, the U.S. presence in the region has also been seen as a stabilizing force on the Korean peninsula and other conflict-prone areas.China rise causes nuclear war. Thayer & Han 19 --- Bradley A. Thayer, with Lianchao Han. * Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas San Antonio. **vice president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China and a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute. Founder of the Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars. "The ‘Xi Doctrine’: Proclaiming and Rationalizing China’s Aggression". National Interest. 6-12-2019. the occasion of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore this month, Chinese Minister of National Defense and State Councilor Gen. Wei Fenghe, delivered a sharp message to the United States, which may be termed the “Xi Doctrine” on China’s use of force, after Chinese premier Xi Jinping. Wei declaring both China’s resolve to aggress to advance its interests and a rationalization for the use of force. Wei’s de facto threat of war should not be lost in his nuances, deliberate ambiguity, or in translation. His remarks were so bellicose that the world has noticed, as was certainly intended by the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Empirical evidence of China’s aggression is increasingly common, from its attempt to dominate the South China Sea, the neo-imperialist effort to gain control of states through the Belt and Road Initiative, to its technological imperialism to control 5G and artificial intelligence technologies. What is rather less frequent are statements from high-level Chinese officials proclaiming the country’s intent to be aggressive and offering an attempted legitimizing principle justifying that aggression. While much of the content of Wei’s remarks were in keeping with the gossamer pronouncements on China’s peaceful intentions, as well as a paean to Xi Jinping’s leadership, they still conveyed that China is ready and willing to resort to war if the United States stands in its way of global expansion; and they made clear that China must go to war, or even a nuclear war, to occupy Taiwan. Specifically, there are four elements that comprise the Xi Doctrine and are indications of China’s signaling its willingness to use force. The first component is a new and alarming proclamation of the undisguised threats to use force or wage an unlimited war. China is becoming bolder as its military power grows. This is evidenced in Wei’s muscular remarks on the People’s Republic of China’s approach against Taiwan, his explicit statement that China does not renounce the use of force against Taiwan, and his effort to deter the United States and its allies from intervention should an attack occur. Wei forcefully stated: “If anyone dares to separate Taiwan from China, the Chinese military has no choice but must go to war, and must fight for the reunification of the motherland at all costs.” “At all cost” means that China will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons or launching another Pearl Harbor to take over Taiwan. This is a clear warning of an invasion. Second, the Xi Doctrine legitimizes territorial expansion. Through his remarks, Wei sought to convince the rest of the world that China’s seizure of most of the South China Sea is an accomplished fact that cannot be overturned. He made bogus accusations, which included blaming the United States for “raking in profits by stirring up troubles” in the region. He insisted that only ASEAN and China must resolve the issue. He claimed that China’s militarization on South China Sea islands and reefs were an act of self-defense. Should this be allowed to stand, then the Xi Doctrine will set a perilous precedent of successful territorial expansion, which will further entice China and jeopardize the peace of the region. Third, the doctrine targets the United States as a cause of the world’s major problems and envisions a powerful China evicting the United States from the region. Wei obliquely identified the United States as the cause wars, conflicts, and unrest, and sought to convey that the United States will abandon the states of the South China Sea (SCS) when it is confronted by Chinese power, a typical divide and conquer strategy used by the CCP regime. The Xi Doctrine’s fourth element is the mendacity regarding China’s historical use of force and current actions. While the distortions of history were numerous, there were three major lies that should be alarming for the states of the region and the global community. First, Wei said that China had never invaded another country, which is a claim so transparently false it can only be a measure of the contempt he held for the audience. China has a long history of aggression, including against the Tibetans and Vietnamese, and perhaps soon against the Taiwanese. Second, Wei argued that hegemony does not conform to China’s values when, in fact, China proudly was Asia’s hegemon for most of the last two thousand years. Lastly, he claimed that the situation in the SCS is moving toward stability—from China’s perspective this stability is caused by its successful seizure of territory. In fact, the SCS is far less stable as a result of China’s actions. Efforts to counter this grab are denounced by Wei as destabilizing, which is a bit like a thief accusing you of a crime for wanting your property returned. Wei’s belligerent rhetoric is an indication that the CCP regime faces deep external and internal crises. Externally, the Trump administration has shocked the CCP with the three major steps it has taken. First, it has shifted the focus of the U.S. national-security strategy and now identifies China explicitly as its primary rival—abandoning the far more muted policies of previous administrations. Second, Trump has acted on this peer competitive threat by advancing tangible measures, such as arms sales to allies and the ban of Huawei. Third, the administration has made credible commitments to assure partners and allies to counter China’s aggression and bullying. These have unbalanced the CCP regime, and its natural reaction is to bully its way out. Additionally, the CCP regime has perceived that the world today has begun to consider the negative implications of China’s rise, and the United States is determined to prevent what heretofore had been considered China’s unstoppable rise. From the perspective of CCP, conflict is increasingly seen as inevitable and perhaps even imminent. Wei’s bellicosity should be seen in this light, and the PLA is tasked with fighting and winning the war. Internally, Xi’s anti-corruption campaign that selectively targets his political rivalries, and his abandoning the established rules such as term limited of presidency, have introduced deep cleavages into the unity of the regime unity. China’s economic slowdown, made worse by the U.S. trade war, is a fundamental challenge to the regime’s legitimacy. Xi’s repression and suppression of the Chinese people, particularly human-rights defenders, Christians, Kazakhs, Uighurs, and other minorities, have miscarried. Drawing from the pages of unfortunate history, in a classic social-imperialist move, the regime wants to direct these internal tensions outward. At the same time, the nationalistic fervor advanced by the CCP’s propaganda and by the rapid military modernization have made many young militant officers in the PLA overconfident. This is infrequently noticed in the West. They can hardly wait to fight an ultimate war to defeat the arch-enemy. This plainly dangerous mentality echoes the Japanese military’s beliefs before Pearl Harbor. The bellicosity evinced in Wei’s speech is serious and is not bluster intended to deter. The United States cannot meet China’s threat with half-measures, which are likely to further encourage China’s aggressive behavior. The United States must respond to China’s belligerence with greater strength, adamantine determination, and more vigorous diplomatic and military measures. With the Xi Doctrine, China has proclaimed and rationalized its aggression. A Trump Doctrine forged in response has to reveal to all global audiences, most importantly the CCP leadership, the recklessness of the Xi Doctrine and the supreme folly of aggression.Ambiguity in resolve causes warGartzke 17 - Professor @ University of California, San Diego, Jonathan N Markowitz, Assistant Professor University of Southern California, Blake R. McMahon, Assistant Professor Air War College (Erik, et al, “Shoot or Scoot: U.S. Strategy toward China in an Age of Uncertainty,” Presented at the West Coast International Relations of Asia hosted in Los Angeles, received via email but I’ve made it accessible through a shared Dropbox folder: . Any trouble accessing, email bricker312 gmail )The disagreements in this debate are manifest in United States foreign policy itself, which has tended to mix opposing strategies rather than apply any one approach exclusively. On one hand, the United States has sought to engage with the Chinese economically and diplomatically. The United States has even invited the Chinese Navy to participate in its most recent RIMPAC military exercises in 2014 and 2016. 4 On the other hand, however, the United States has continued to challenge Chinese interests in the Western Pacific and elsewhere by deploying military forces to contested areas and supplying China’s regional rivals with arms. In many ways, Washington’s approach to China is not unique. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has sought to manage potential challengers through a compromise policy that combines engagement with elements of military containment.5 Several presidential administrations have attempted to seduce potential challengers with Western trade, while simultaneously seeking to discourage revisionism through regional military superiority. 6 Conventional wisdom holds that combining strategies in this way is a type of strategic hedge, putting the United States in the position to deter conflict should efforts at engagement fail.7 However, we argue that Washington’s ambivalence, when combined with a shift in the balance of power in Beijing’s favor, encourages China to challenge the geopolitical status quo in a way that exacerbates the risk of war. Dick Betts encapsulates the potential danger: If a crisis erupts, ambivalent deterrence may cause conflict rather than prevent it. It might prove too weak to make Beijing swerve first, but strong enough to keep Washington from swerving also, thus causing a collision. The only solution is a clear strategic decision about whether the United States will accept China’s full claims as a superpower when it becomes one or draw clear redlines before a crisis comes.8 How can states overcome this dilemma? We explore United States foreign policy through the lens of recent scholarship on the causes of war between states. The key insight from this research is that war is not caused by disagreements among states, but rather by the forces that prevent states from bargaining peacefully to resolve these disagreements. 9 In particular, uncertainty about the capabilities and intentions of competitors is thought to be a preeminent cause of bargaining failure and war because it can lead states to miscalculate during crises. 10 In this light, a mixed U.S. policy of engagement and containment is so dangerous because it enhances the type of strategic ambiguity that leads to war. Consequently, the way to resolve the strategic dilemma with China is not to hedge, but rather to adopt a more decisive policy that minimizes uncertainty about what the U.S. seeks to accomplish in the Pacific. Fully committing to a policy of accommodation and engagement is the best way to reduce the probability that China seeks to violently overthrow the existing order, while simultaneously allowing Washington to reap the benefits of economic cooperation. The goal of engagement is to alter Chinese preferences such that Beijing can envision a viable and valuable role in the existing international order, thus reducing the risk of war. The cost of pursuing such a policy is that it strengthens China, potentially increasing the severity of harm to U.S. interests if Beijing were to adopt revisionist policies in the future. Alternatively, containment backed by investments in maintaining overwhelming military dominance in China’s littoral waters is the better choice if Washington believes that China will be a revisionist type regardless of American policy, and if U.S. national interests necessitate maintaining all existing commitments and making no concessions to China. Investing in the forces to insure local military dominance will make Washington’s deterrent threats more credible, and therefore avoid the dangerous risk of Chinese miscalculation about America’s capabilities and resolve. This policy is costly in terms of both the forces that would need to be procured and deployed, as well as the political and economic costs associated with antagonizing the world’s second-largest economic power and the U.S.’ second-largest trading partner. However, if U.S. policymakers believe that maintaining current U.S. commitments is worth these costs, then this policy of containment, although expensive, should reduce the risk of conflict over U.S. commitments.China’s rise is hostile---CCP leaders deploy ambiguity to hide revisionist goals. Mastro, Jan/Feb 2019 – Assistant Prof of Security Studies at Georgetown U and Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; “The Stealth Superpower: How China Hid Its Global Ambitions, Foreign Affairs, will not, repeat, not repeat the old practice of a strong country seeking hegemony,” Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, said last September. It was a message that Chinese officials have been pushing ever since their country’s spectacular rise began. For decades, they have been at pains to downplay China’s power and reassure other countries—especially the United States—of its benign intentions. Jiang Zemin, China’s leader in the 1990s, called for mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, and cooperation in the country’s foreign relations. Under Hu Jintao, who took the reins of power in 2002, “peaceful development” became the phrase of the moment. The current president, Xi Jinping, insisted in September 2017 that China “lacks the gene” that drives great powers to seek hegemony. It is easy to dismiss such protestations as simple deceit. In fact, however, Chinese leaders are telling the truth: Beijing truly does not want to replace Washington at the top of the international system. China has no interest in establishing a web of global alliances, sustaining a far-flung global military presence, sending troops thousands of miles from its borders, leading international institutions that would constrain its own behavior, or spreading its system of government abroad. But to focus on this reluctance, and the reassuring Chinese statements reflecting it, is a mistake. Although China does not want to usurp the United States’ position as the leader of a global order, its actual aim is nearly as consequential. In the Indo-Pacific region, China wants complete dominance; it wants to force the United States out and become the region’s unchallenged political, economic, and military hegemon. And globally, even though it is happy to leave the United States in the driver’s seat, it wants to be powerful enough to counter Washington when needed. As one Chinese official put it to me, “Being a great power means you get to do what you want, and no one can say anything about it.” In other words, China is trying to displace, rather than replace, the United States. The way that China has gone about this project has caused many observers to mistakenly conclude that the country is merely trying to coexist with American power rather than fundamentally overturn the order in Asia and compete with U.S. influence globally. In fact, ambiguity has been part of the strategy: Chinese leaders have recognized that in order to succeed, they must avoid provoking an unfavorable response, and so they have refrained from directly challenging the United States, replicating its orderbuilding model, or matching its globally active military. Although Beijing has pursued an indirect and entrepreneurial strategy of accumulating power, make no mistake: the ultimate goal is to push the United States out of the Indo-Pacific and rival it on the global stage. Until now, China has succeeded in growing without provoking. Yet there is a limit to how powerful a country can get without directly challenging the incumbent power, and China is now reaching that point. Under Xi, China has begun confronting American power head-on. Given the country’s internal challenges, China’s rise could still stall. But history has shown that in the vast majority of cases in which a country was able to sustain its rise, the rising power ended up overtaking the dominant power, whether peacefully or through war. That does not mean that the United States cannot buck the historical trend. To remain dominant, Washington will have to change course. It will have to deepen, rather than lessen, its involvement in the liberal international order. It will have to double down on, rather than abandon, its commitment to American values. And perhaps most important, it will have to ensure that its leadership benefits others rather than pursue a strategy based on “America first.” HOW CHINA ROSE Throughout history, would-be powers have invented new ways of growing. The Mongol Empire connected lands through trade, the Qing dynasty built a tributary system, the United Kingdom collected colonies, the Soviet Union created ideologically linked spheres of influence, and the United States established an institutionalized order and a global military presence. China, too, has looked for new sources of power and has used it in ways not previously attempted. In the political realm, China has undertaken a combination of covert actions and public diplomacy to co-opt and neutralize foreign opposition. To shape the discourse on sensitive topics, it has set up hundreds of Confucius Institutes at universities around the world and launched English-language media outlets to disseminate the Chinese Communist Party’s narrative. Chinese intelligence agents have even recruited Chinese citizens studying abroad to act as informants and pass along what Chinese students and professors are saying about their country. In Australia and New Zealand, China has sought to influence politics more directly, secretly donating money to preferred candidates. Beijing has been especially innovative in its use of economic power. The strategy here has been to finance infrastructure in the developing world in order to create dependent, and thus compliant, foreign governments. Most recently, those efforts have taken the form of the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive regional infrastructure project launched in 2013. China has spent about $400 billion on the initiative (and pledged hundreds of billions of dollars more), and it has convinced 86 countries and international organizations to sign some 100 related cooperation agreements. Chinese aid, which primarily takes the form of loans from banks controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, doesn’t come with the usual Western strings attached: there are no requirements for market reforms or better governance. What China does demand from recipients, however, is allegiance on a number of issues, including the nonrecognition of Taiwan. As the analyst Nadege Rolland has written, the Belt and Road Initiative “is intended to enable China to better use its growing economic clout to achieve its ultimate political aims without provoking a countervailing response or a military conflict.” The key is that Beijing has left the military dimensions of this project ambiguous, generating uncertainty within Washington about its true intentions. Many observers have wondered whether the Belt and Road Initiative will eventually have a strong military component, but that misses the point. Even if the initiative is not the prelude to an Americanstyle global military presence—and it probably isn’t—China could still use the economic and political influence generated by the project to limit the reach of American power. For instance, it could pressure dependent states in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia to deny the U.S. military the right to enter their airspace or access their ground facilities. China’s entrepreneurialism is not limited to the economic and political realms; it also has a hard-power component. Indeed, perhaps nowhere has Beijing been more entrepreneurial than in its military strategy. Its “anti-access/ area-denial” (A2/AD) doctrine, for one thing, was a masterstroke of innovation: by developing relatively low-cost asymmetric military capabilities, the country has been able to greatly complicate any U.S. plan to come to the aid of Japan, the Philippines, or Taiwan in the event of war. For another thing, instead of confronting the United States to push its military out of the Asia-Pacific region, China has engaged in subtler activities, such as harassing U.S. ships and aircraft with nonmilitary means, which allow it to maintain a degree of deniability and discourage a U.S. response. Thanks to such tactics, China has made significant political and territorial gains without crossing the threshold into open conflict with the United States or its allies. China has also avoided sparking a concerted response from the United States by deliberately delaying the modernization of its military. As Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping famously put it, “Hide your strength, bide your time.” Since countries tend to draw inferences about a challenger’s intentions from the size and nature of its armed forces, China opted to first build up other types of pow ereconomic, political, and cultural—in order to project a less threatening image.US Heg sustainable Unipolarity is sustainable and creates a structural disincentive for great power war and escalation – power vacuums cause cascade prolif and extinctionHal Brands 15. On the faculty at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University The Elliott School of International Affairs The Washington Quarterly Summer 2015 38:2 pp. 7–28The fundamental reason is that both U.S. influence and international stability are thoroughly interwoven with a robust U.S. forward presence. Regarding influence, the protection that Washington has afforded its allies has equally afforded the United States great sway over those allies’ policies.43 During the Cold War and after, for instance, the United States has used the influence provided by its security posture to veto allies’ pursuit of nuclear weapons, to obtain more advantageous terms in financial and trade agreements, and even to affect the composition of allied nations’ governments.44 More broadly, it has used its alliances as vehicles for shaping political, security, and economic agendas in key regions and bilateral relationships, thus giving the United States an outsized voice on a range of important issues. To be clear, this influence has never been as pervasive as U.S. officials might like, or as some observers might imagine. But by any reasonable standard of comparison, it has nonetheless been remarkable. One can tell a similar story about the relative stability of the post-war order. As even some leading offshore balancers have acknowledged, the lack of conflict in regions like Europe in recent decades is not something that has occurred naturally. It has occurred because the “American pacifier” has suppressed precisely the dynamics that previously fostered geopolitical turmoil. That pacifier has limited arms races and security competitions by providing the protection that allows other countries to under-build their militaries. It has soothed historical rivalries by affording a climate of security in which powerful countries like Germany and Japan could be revived economically and reintegrated into thriving and fairly cooperative regional orders. It has induced caution in the behavior of allies and adversaries alike, deterring aggression and dissuading other destabilizing behavior. As John Mearsheimer has noted, the United States “effectively acts as a night watchman,” lending order to an otherwise disorderly and anarchical environment.45 What would happen if Washington backed away from this role? The most logical answer is that both U.S. influence and global stability would suffer. With respect to influence, the United States would effectively be surrendering the most powerful bargaining chip it has traditionally wielded in dealing with friends and allies, and jeopardizing the position of leadership it has used to shape bilateral and regional agendas for decades. The consequences would seem no less damaging where stability is concerned. As offshore balancers have argued, it may be that U.S. retrenchment would force local powers to spend more on defense, while perhaps assuaging certain points of friction with countries that feel threatened or encircled by U.S. presence. But it equally stands to reason that removing the American pacifier would liberate the more destabilizing influences that U.S. policy had previously stifled. Long-dormant security competitions might reawaken as countries armed themselves more vigorously; historical antagonisms between old rivals might reemerge in the absence of a robust U.S. presence and the reassurance it provides. Moreover, countries that seek to revise existing regional orders in their favor—think Russia in Europe, or China in Asia—might indeed applaud U.S. retrenchment, but they might just as plausibly feel empowered to more assertively press their interests. If the United States has been a kind of Leviathan in key regions, Mearsheimer acknowledges, then “take away that Leviathan and there is likely to be big trouble.”46 Scanning the global horizon today, one can easily see where such trouble might arise. In Europe, a revisionist Russia is already destabilizing its neighbors and contesting the post-Cold War settlement in the region. In the Gulf and broader Middle East, the threat of Iranian ascendancy has stoked region-wide tensions manifesting in proxy wars and hints of an incipient arms race, even as that region also contends with a severe threat to its stability in the form of the Islamic State. In East Asia, a rising China is challenging the regional status quo in numerous ways, sounding alarms among its neighbors—many of whom also have historical grievances against each other. In these circumstances, removing the American pacifier would likely yield not low-cost stability, but increased conflict and upheaval. That conflict and upheaval, in turn, would be quite damaging to U.S. interests even if it did not result in the nightmare scenario of a hostile power dominating a key region. It is hard to imagine, for instance, that increased instability and acrimony would produce the robust multilateral cooperation necessary to deal with transnational threats from pandemics to piracy. More problematic still might be the economic consequences. As scholars like Michael Mandelbaum have argued, the enormous progress toward global prosperity and integration that has occurred since World War II (and now the Cold War) has come in the climate of relative stability and security provided largely by the United States.47 One simply cannot confidently predict that this progress would endure amid escalating geopolitical competition in regions of enormous importance to the world economy. Perhaps the greatest risk that a strategy of offshore balancing would run, of course, is that a key region might not be able to maintain its own balance following U.S. retrenchment. That prospect might have seemed far-fetched in the early post-Cold War era, and it remains unlikely in the immediate future. But in East Asia particularly, the rise and growing assertiveness of China has highlighted the medium- to long-term danger that a hostile power could in fact gain regional primacy. If China’s economy continues to grow rapidly, and if Beijing continues to increase military spending by 10 percent or more each year, then its neighbors will ultimately face grave challenges in containing Chinese power even if they join forces in that endeavor. This possibility, ironically, is one to which leading advocates of retrenchment have been attuned. “The United States will have to play a key role in countering China,” Mearshimer writes, “because its Asian neighbors are not strong enough to do it by themselves.”48 If this is true, however, then offshore balancing becomes a dangerous and potentially self-defeating strategy. As mentioned above, it could lead countries like Japan and South Korea to seek nuclear weapons, thereby stoking arms races and elevating regional tensions. Alternatively, and perhaps more worryingly, it might encourage the scenario that offshore balancers seek to avoid, by easing China’s ascent to regional hegemony. As Robert Gilpin has written, “Retrenchment by its very nature is an indication of relative weakness and declining power, and thus retrenchment can have a deteriorating effect on relations with allies and rivals.”49 In East Asia today, U.S. allies rely on U.S. reassurance to navigate increasingly fraught relationships with a more assertive China precisely because they understand that they will have great trouble balancing Beijing on their own. A significant U.S. retrenchment might therefore tempt these countries to acquiesce to, or bandwagon with, a rising China if they felt that prospects for successful resistance were diminishing as the United States retreated.50 In the same vein, retrenchment would compromise alliance relationships, basing agreements, and other assets that might help Washington check Chinese power in the first place—and that would allow the United States to surge additional forces into theater in a crisis. In sum, if one expects that Asian countries will be unable to counter China themselves, then reducing U.S. influence and leverage in the region is a curious policy. Offshore balancing might promise to preserve a stable and advantageous environment while reducing U.S. burdens. But upon closer analysis, the probable outcomes of the strategy seem more perilous and destabilizing than its proponents acknowledge.U.S. heg is sustainable --- neg authors are wrong --- it doesn’t cause overstretch or free-riding Carla Norloff 18, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, PhD in International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Hegemony and inequality: Trump and the liberal playbook, January 2018, International Affairs, Volume 94, Issue 1, = Liberal International Order The second relevant theoretical approach is grounded in Waltzian realism. According to this approach, states should pursue their national interest defined narrowly, responding to threats that affect them directly. The doctrine of restraint, also called selective engagement, sees the maintenance of long-term hegemony as exceedingly costly and futile, breeding resentment and requiring rivals to be defeated and outcompeted in a continuous effort to thwart attempts at balancing. Balancing occurs when states seek to reduce the military power of exceptionally dominant states. The tendency for states to balance power is a hard systemic law, which no state can escape, and which guarantees that a unipolar distribution of power will eventually become bipolar or multipolar. Academic advocates of selective engagement approve of Trump's call for a more restrained foreign policy while distancing themselves from his other ideas.44 They believe America's postwar grand strategy spills too much blood and treasure and carries high opportunity costs,45 and that the United States should instead pursue a strategy of offshore balancing, refocusing policies around a narrow definition of the national interest limited to preserving regional hegemony in the western hemisphere and preventing the rise of regional hegemons.46 They consider US security interests to be at stake in three areas—Europe, east Asia and the Persian Gulf—with only east Asia requiring significant onshore engagement.47 Broadly agreeing with Trump, they say allies have to learn how to fend for themselves, and that the US should introduce uncertainty about forthcoming military support.48 In order to improve the plight of fellow Americans, the United States should reorientate public policy around domestic goals, giving up some international goals. For proponents of these arguments, America's international commitments clash with its domestic commitments.? Three flawed assumptions? Three features of the LIO emerge as problematic from these two perspectives. First, other countries free-ride on US political and economic leadership. Second, there are fundamental trade-offs between America's military and economic capability: US security commitments are responsible for US economic decline. Third, there are fundamental trade-offs between America's international and domestic posture. On the basis of this analysis, to promote America's national interest, the grand strategy supporting the LIO should be replaced with strategic restraint; the US should stop bearing a disproportionate share of the costs associated with solving global problems and let others take care of themselves, restricting US involvement to protecting vital security interests, defending the homeland and preventing the emergence of a regional hegemon.? However, the three assumptions underlying this analysis, and criticisms of the LIO, mischaracterize America's liberal dilemma. The first questionable assumption is that international cooperation resembles a public goods problem whereby the US, as the largest state, bears disproportionate costs while free-riding allies reap disproportionate benefits. Second, the negative repercussions of US security commitments for US economic strength are rarely balanced against the full benefits of US security commitments to the United States itself. Third, the assumption that there is an international–domestic trade-off and that whatever resources have been ‘squandered’ on international engagement can readily be diverted to the pursuit of productive, welfare-enhancing, domestic goals grossly understates both US benefits from the LIO and the risks attached to dismantling ‘selected’ parts of the LIO.49? When international cooperation is cast as a public goods dilemma, it is easy to come to the conclusion that the hegemon is in a disadvantageous position. But the public goods analogy does not adequately capture the essence of international cooperation, because few issues are characterized by the properties that define public goods—non-rivalry and non-exclusion.50 Rather, the hegemon provides a mix of public and private goods, or imperfect public goods.51 Despite these recognized flaws, and much scholarship to the contrary, the public goods version of HST remains influential.? Rejecting the ‘exploited hegemon’ version of HST, several scholars point to the ways in which the hegemon is positionally primed to benefit disproportionately from underwriting the LIO.52 They argue that public goods provision offers more opportunities than constraints, and, while they recognize that free-riding is a possible threat to the hegemon's long-term rule,53 they emphasize the ways in which the hegemon can use its dominance to internalize positive externalities and externalize negative externalities.54 As long as the hegemon is not providing pure public goods, the distribution of gains will not necessarily favour other states. And as long as the distribution of gains does not favour other states, providing an open economy does not necessarily compromise the hegemon's security interests or its position of dominance.55? The founders of HST, Robert Gilpin and Stephen Krasner, believed that hegemonic orders were particularly robust during the hegemon's ascendancy, and therefore worried greatly about the future of US hegemony and the LIO as the US underwent relative decline in the 1970s and 1980s.? Contemporary scholars, on the other hand, emphasize the cyclical property of postwar hegemony, seeing the United States as capable of reversing phases of decline by using different levers of power to avoid absolute decline.56 They see different forms of power interacting favourably for the hegemon, with financial dominance reinforcing commercial dominance, commercial dominance facilitating financial dominance, and security dominance boosting both commercial and financial dominance.57? Since the 1980s, IR scholars have tended to view the United States as militarily strong yet economically weak, a development hastened with the rise of China and other emerging economies in the third millennium.58 But even today, after many rounds of decline (and ascent), the United States has no peer competitor either militarily or economically. Commercially robust but financially vulnerable, China ranks as the world's third largest military power after Russia and the United States. While Russia's military continues to be the US military's principal rival, it is not as potent as it was under the Soviet Union. And while Russia's economy is not as debilitated as it was under the Soviet Union, it continues to be frail. Japan and Germany, two of America's principal allies, are economically strong, but militarily weak.? As figures 1 and 2 reveal, the United States has sustained its economic lead throughout the postwar era, boasting the world's first economy with an unrivalled capacity for economic output, an impressive commercial record and an unsurpassed financial position. US economic performance is grossly underrated. First, as shown in figure 1, which displays US GDP, trade and company size, US GDP is still roughly a quarter of global GDP (just below the dotted 25 per cent line). Declinists take the considerable fall in America's postwar share of global GDP as a sign of weakness. But it is unrealistic to think that the United States would continue to command a third of global GDP as it did immediately after the Second World War—particularly since much of the observed decline was the result of deliberate efforts by the United States to bolster its allies in western Europe and east Asia through the Marshall Plan and other initiatives.59 What is rather remarkable is that, even with the rise of non-allies such as China, America's share of world GDP has stabilized around a quarter and continues to be nearly twice as large as China's share. Second, as also shown in figure 1, US commercial capability aggregated into its combined share of world exports and imports—trade—is slightly higher than China's. But exports and imports are not the best way to measure commercial prowess, because the contemporary web of production globalizes manufacturing. Owing to global supply chains, imported final goods include intermediate inputs and technology produced and developed in the United States that do not show up as exports but nonetheless provide American jobs and income. And when exporting final goods, US firms depend on low trade barriers to import low-cost intermediate inputs. The United States' ability to spread production worldwide has been accompanied by long-term rising trends in numbers of foreign affiliates, value added and net income, generating significant profits for the United States.60 As shown in figure 1, the aggregate value of US companies far exceeds that of any other country.? Figure 1:? Great Power production and commercial capability, 2016? View largeDownload slide? Great Power production and commercial capability, 2016? Figure 2:? Great Power financial and military capability, 2016? View largeDownload slide? Great Power financial and military capability, 2016? Third, few assessments compare the relative financial capabilities of Great Powers. Studies often favour narrow definitions of financial power over broader assessments. Some focus on the relative size of US financial markets, some on financial networks, some on reserve currency issuance, but few provide an aggregate picture.61 These incomplete portrayals lead to gross underestimation of US financial power.62 As shown in figure 2, US financial markets account for slightly more than a quarter of the global total, and US reserve currency provision far surpasses that of any other state or states, and that of the eurozone.? Fourth, as also demonstrated in figure 2, the United States is the world's most formidable military power, its capabilities far exceeding those of any other nation. Taking into account front-line capabilities on the ground, on the sea and in the air, as well as the capacity for reconnaissance, strategic transport and communication to project power, the United States has no rival.63? The United States' multidimensional power base clearly puts it in a class above rival powers. Yet its privileged position in the international system is even greater than what these snapshot barometers indicate, because significant synergies exist between the various dimensions.64? US security dominance supports US commercial and monetary dominance, and its commercial and monetary dominance are mutually supportive. First, by providing security guarantees, stabilizing hot-spots and securing sea lanes, the United States ensures that international trade and finance can occur without disruption. This is of great value to the United States itself because, as the world's single largest economy, it has a high stake in guaranteeing stable economic relations. Second, propping up the financial realm, America's vast security network provides incentives for allies to continue supporting the dollar's role as the number one global currency.65 Third, the dollar's global role gives the United States the capacity to borrow at exceptionally low rates, providing it with extraordinary macroeconomic flexibility to ease balance of payments adjustments, particularly trade adjustments.66 Fourth, America's commercial position bolsters the dollar's global role by facilitating trade adjustment as governments, particularly in emerging markets, continue to finance US deficits by holding dollar assets in the hope of gaining continued access to US markets.67? ‘America first’ promises to touch all of these areas, overhauling longstanding US policies in the security, commercial and monetary spheres. But its real menace lies in its potential for sparking drastic changes by overturning policies in just one sphere. If the United States ceases to defend allies, and reduces its commitment to secure the international environment, cross-border trade and investment will operate in a more uncertain setting. While it is impossible to predict which policy is most likely to unleash an unfavourable chain of events, a hypothetical example can be used to illustrate the presumptive cascade. If we assume the United States follows through with significant commercial retreat, then we should expect monetary consequences. With the United States ceasing to account for a significant portion of international trade, official and private investors will increasingly hold alternative currencies for reserves and payment. If the diversification out of dollars is substantial, the dollar could gradually lose its centrality in the monetary order, complicating the adjustment of US trade imbalances. Balance of payments difficulties could very well ricochet back in the monetary sphere, with a crisis of confidence over trade imbalances triggering a run on the dollar. With the dollar under pressure, its international role for governments and private actors could come into question. If the dollar is no longer widely used for reserves and payments, US financial markets will lose importance relative to other financial markets. A diminished role for US financial markets implies lower demand for US assets, raising US borrowing costs. And the loss of US borrowing privileges will have security ramifications, since financing US military power will become more expensive.68 With these developments, America's slippage in the ranks of Great Powers will be assured.? The real liberal dilemma? President Trump misidentifies the nature of the redistribution problem confronting America, misinterpreting unequal internal redistribution as unequal external redistribution. The liberal dilemma is not that the LIO distributes gains unfavourably to the United States, but that not everyone in the United States wins because US domestic policies have not kept pace with global economic integration. Economic globalization can deepen domestic inequality. Import competition causes some sectors to shrink, and workers employed in contracting sectors may not be fully absorbed in expanding sectors. Neo-classical trade theory predicts that economic activity will increase in the sector using the country's abundant factor since its reward will increase relative to that of the scarce factor.69 In the case of an advanced capital-abundant country such as the United States, this means that the reward to capital will increase relative to labour. Financial globalization has even more acute effects on the distribution of income, further raising the reward to capital relative to labour.70 However, since suspending international economic exchange reduces national welfare gains, countries are better off expanding the pie, and compensating losers with the higher gains available from economic globalization. The United States needs to bring back ‘embedded liberalism’ to redistribute benefits from openness through greater safeguards and labour adjustment programmes, including trade adjustment, so that the LIO can begin to work for all Americans.71? Dissatisfaction with the international distribution of income is, however, insufficient to explain the backlash against globalization. President Trump correctly identified the liberal dilemma inside the United States as the clash between liberal ideals and the preservation of a racial hierarchy which put ‘white America first’—a contradiction which has resulted in a racial and educational divide at the ballot box.72 To fully understand waning American support for the LIO, one must look to the unravelling of America's liberal identity as a principal cause of the less secure domestic foundations of the LIO. Some elements of America's liberal identity, such as ‘political democracy, constitutional government, individual rights [and] private property based economic systems’, remain intact. However, other elements, such as ‘toleration of diversity in non-civic areas of ethnicity and religion’ are in jeopardy.73 In fomenting an ‘us and them’ division between Americans and foreigners alleged to be exploiting the United States, and by stoking an internal division between Americans of different ethnicities and faiths, Trump unveiled an international and domestic hierarchy that some thought no longer existed. How did these factors intermingle with income inequality in the 2016 US elections?? The extent of inequality in the United States? Income inequality in the United States has increased since the late 1960s. By 2015, the top 5 per cent earned 28 times as much, and the top 20 per cent 16 times as much, as the lowest 20 per cent of Americans. This share has risen over time irrespective of the incumbent president's party affiliation, as shown in figure 3, which traces this development back to the late 1970s. Below I use mean income data from the US Census Bureau to discern the effect of income inequality on different ethnic groups. Ideally, this analysis would be performed using median income data, but this is not consistently available across all measures of interest.74? Figure 3:? Income inequality between the top and bottom income earners in the United States, 1978–2016? View largeDownload slide? Income inequality between the top and bottom income earners in the United States, 1978–2016? Concerns about income may have loomed large in the 2016 presidential elections. It could be, for instance, that by 2016 income inequality in the United States had reached a tipping point, a level that Americans were no longer prepared to tolerate. The only vote margin—that is, the difference in percentage of votes between Republicans and Democrats—that was consistently and substantially different from those in the 2008 and 2012 elections was the margin for those earning less than US$50,000 a year. Although this group—arguably the most affected by the widening income gap—still supported the Democratic candidate overall (though to a lesser extent than in the two previous elections), the margin between the Democratic and Republican votes narrowed to 12 points from 22 points in 2008 and 2012. The margins for higher-income groups were not as wide, nor were they significantly different from the levels recorded in the 2008 and 2012 elections. In an anti-establishment election, factors other than income, such as Clinton's ‘elitism’, might have been a liability. But the unfavourable opinion of Clinton (81 per cent) was less strong among those who voted for Trump than disapproval of former President Obama (89 per cent).75 It is, however, possible that dissatisfaction with Clinton was greater within the group earning under US$50,000.? While income did matter in the 2016 election, it was not, on its own, the most important predictor of the outcome. As shown in figures 4 and 5, income did play a role, but primarily as it intersected with other factors, particularly education and colour.76 In the following paragraphs I consider the income growth of non-college-educated whites relative to college-educated whites; and the absolute income (including income growth) of non-college-educated whites relative to the overall non-college-educated population.? Figure 4:? Income growth among US citizens with education below college degree level, 1998–2016? View largeDownload slide? Income growth among US citizens with education below college degree level, 1998–2016? Figure 5:? Income growth among US citizens with education above college degree level, 1998–2016? View largeDownload slide? Income growth among US citizens with education above college degree level, 1998–2016? In 2016, white voters without a college degree voted for Trump (66 per cent) with much higher percentages than in 2012 (61 per cent) and 2008 (58 per cent), and with much higher margins (see figure 4). But white voters without a college degree (both those with and those without a high school diploma) supported Trump despite experiencing greater income growth during the full span of Obama's presidency than any other white group defined by educational level. Their income expansion was also stronger than any other education group during Obama's second term (2012–2016). However, during Obama's first term (2008–2012), their income did not grow as fast as that of white Americans with advanced degrees, although they did better than those with an associate (i.e. two-year college) degree or bachelor's degree. Despite stronger income development than college-educated income earners, whites without a college degree voted for Trump with a 37-point margin, whereas whites with a college degree favoured Trump with only a 3-point margin. Although these numbers suggest that something other than income explains Trump's victory, it could still be that the higher margins for white voters without college degrees reflect discontent with low real incomes.? If low real incomes explain Trump's support among white voters without college degrees, we should find general support for Trump among voters with low real incomes. However, since 1998 the mean income of whites without college degrees has always been higher than the mean income of all those without college degrees. If their income remained higher, was their income growth slower? During the full length of Obama's presidency, and during his first term, whites without a college degree experienced higher growth than all income earners without a college degree. Only during Obama's second term did the mean income of whites without a college degree underperform the income of all earners without a college degree. The growth differential between the two groups during this period,77 however, is quite small, for both those with and those without a high school diploma: the mean income of workers without a high school diploma increased by 13.41 per cent, compared to 12.99 per cent growth for whites without a high school diploma. The mean income of all workers with a high school diploma increased by 5.73 per cent; of whites with a high-school diploma, by 5.60 per cent. It is noteworthy that during Obama's second term the overall mean income of all earners with a college degree increased less than for whites with a college degree. The biggest difference was for whites with an advanced degree, who earned US$1,394 a year less than the mean income of all recipients of advanced degrees. Yet despite slower income growth, white college graduates were disinclined to vote Republican in the 2016 elections (see figure 5).? If dissatisfaction with income played a role in explaining why white voters without a college degree endorsed Trump, the only evidence for it is the relatively lower income growth of white earners without college degrees compared to all earners without college degrees between 2012 and 2015. Disaggregating the income differential for non-college-educated whites, those without a high-school diploma experienced 0.43 per cent lower income growth, and those with a diploma 0.13 per cent lower income growth, than all non-college-educated earners within the corresponding educational group. It is highly unlikely that these small percentage differences explain why whites without a college degree favoured Trump with a 37-point margin whereas all earners without a college degree favoured Trump with only a 7-point margin.? If income mattered only in conjunction with education and colour in the 2016 elections, income might have been more decisive in distressed regions. One of the biggest surprises in the 2016 presidential election was how the Democrats lost the ‘blue wall’ states in the ‘Rust Belt’—Pennsylvania in the north-east; Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio in the mid-west. The Democrats also lost Florida in the south, a traditionally Republican state, which Obama won in 2008 and 2012.? Declining employment and income are said to have contributed to support for Trump in conventionally Democratic states. But there are several problems with this explanation. While the decline in the mid-west is real, it has been in the making for a very long time. During the Obama years, specifically between 2008 and 2016, income in the mid-west rose more sharply than in all other regions. During Obama's second term, both white and overall income growth was stronger in the mid-west than in any other region. Yet the Republican vote exceeded the Democratic vote in the mid-west by the second-highest margin of any region (see figure 6). Moreover, during the same period, income growth for whites was higher than for all ethnic groups combined; and yet whites in the mid-west voted Republican by a margin of 20 points, compared to a margin of 5 points for the region overall. However, during Obama's second term, white income growth in the mid-west was lower than in all other regions except for the west. Overall income growth was worse in the mid-west than in all other regions. Yet the white margin in favour of Trump was stronger in the mid-west (20 points) than in the west (5 points), and the overall margin in favour of Trump in the mid-west (5 points) was considerably lower than for whites in the mid-west (20 points).? Figure 6:? Income growth by region and race, 1998–2015? View largeDownload slide? Income growth by region and race, 1998–2015? Given the higher proportion of whites in the mid-west (76 per cent) than nationally (61 per cent), and the higher number of voters in the region aged over 25 years without a college degree (71 per cent) than nationally (55 per cent),78 it is likely that factors of education, colour and income combine to explain the level of support for Trump in 2016.? In the 2016 election, racial polarization, as measured by the difference between white and non-white preferences for Trump, was highest in the south, second to highest in the mid-west and north-east, and lowest in the west. These cleavages were most apparent in the south and mid-west. White voters were aligned with Trump in the south (67 per cent) and the mid-west (57 per cent), non-white voters with Clinton in the south (77 per cent) and mid-west (75 per cent).? Racially differentiated voting patterns do not necessarily mean that voting is racially motivated. It could be that whites are generally more conservative on a range of issues and that their views were therefore better aligned with the policies espoused by the Republican than the Democratic candidate. Yet that would not explain why so many white college-educated voters fled the Republican presidential nominee in 2016 (see figure 5). Rather, there exists some evidence that racist attitudes encouraged a portion of the white electorate to align with Trump. For example, 80 per cent of white evangelical Christians supported Trump.79 Their vote is important because although they account for a lower share of the population today (17 per cent) than in 2008 (21 per cent), they still account for 26 per cent of the vote because a lot of them turn out to vote.80 Their high proportion of the vote suggests that racism might have been a relevant issue. In the months before the elections, a non-partisan study by the American Values Atlas revealed that white evangelicals were less likely to perceive discrimination against blacks, with only 36 per cent saying blacks were discriminated against ‘a lot’, compared to the national average of 57 per cent.81? Trump and the liberal playbook? In 2016, socio-cultural fissures within the United States played a critical role in the election of the presidential candidate most disparaging of the LIO. Trump's call to put America ‘first’ internationally, and white Christians ‘first’ domestically, resonated with non-college-educated white voters who saw their historic privileges fading. Not all grievances were racially motivated; certainly, some poorer non-college-educated whites compared their present situation unfavourably with the rosier circumstances of their families' past.82? The relationship between education and race was first noted over seven decades ago. Gunnar Myrdal's 1944 book An American dilemma was famously cited in the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and helped desegregate education in the United States by demonstrating that education could not be separate but equal for blacks.83 Myrdal went further, calling for an ‘educational offensive against racial intolerance’ and the forging of an ‘American creed’, a civic culture with equal rights for all Americans, to overcome the contradiction between American liberal ideals and the reality of racial discrimination.84? Since then, great progress has been made. Blacks, and other minorities, in the United States are equal before the law and have equal political rights, and greater social and economic opportunities, than before. Education has no doubt played a significant role in reducing explicit racist behaviour or individual racism, that is, ‘overt acts by individuals, which cause death, injury or the violent destruction of property’.85 But discrimination is a problem beyond what most people would recognize as specific instances of racist behaviour. Institutional racism is a ‘less overt, far more subtle, less identifiable’ form of racism, which ‘originates in the operation of established and respected forces in society’.86 The concept of white privilege is the flip side of institutional racism and refers to the unearned benefits enjoyed as a result of being white.87 The concept is not intended to mean that every white person is ‘privileged’ or that no other form of privilege exists. It is intended to expose the existence of an implicit racial hierarchy in society and the political, economic and legal inequality which it reproduces.88 Attempts to attenuate white privilege are met with suspicion and opposition by those who benefit from it. For example, today a majority of white Americans (55 per cent) believe they are discriminated against, and nearly half of them (26 per cent) attribute this to US ‘laws and government policies’.89 Whites who believe they face institutional racism are unlikely to see a difference between policies designed to reduce unmerited privileges and policies that reduce merited privileges. They are also unlikely to appreciate how restrictive the scope for affirmative action is. For example, in the case of university admissions policies, quotas have been unconstitutional since the 1978 Supreme Court decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Many states even forbid the use of race in admissions procedures. Where states do permit the use of race, it may be used only as one criterion in promoting diversity, and only if all other methods fail, as laid down in the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Fisher v. University of Texas.? The political scientist and public intellectual Walter Russell Mead has explained the 2016 election outcome as a ‘Jacksonian revolt’ in which many ‘white Americans find themselves in a society that talks constantly about the importance of identity, that values ethnic authenticity, that offers economic benefits and social advantages based on identity—for everybody but them’.90 Another political scientist, Mark Lilla, proposes an end to identity politics as a way to secure broader support for liberal policies.91 I agree with Mead that identity politics cannot be unilateral, and I agree with Lilla that the American habit of categorizing individuals according to essentialist criteria is contrary to liberal principles. But I am not sure either of them would agree that there has been an essentialist identity politics in the United States, going back at least to the eighteenth century, constructed around the primacy of a white American identity of European Christian descent. Reactions against this unspoken identity politics lay beneath claims of institutional racism long before Trump gave voice to a ‘white America first’ policy at home.? College-educated white Americans are more likely to recognize the advantages attached to being white (47 per cent) than white Americans without college degrees (17 per cent).92 A possible reason for this is that higher education fosters liberal attitudes, and provides exposure to different ethnic groups, limiting blatant forms of racism.93 But even though college-educated whites are less inclined to vote for their privilege, and more prepared to see their privilege, there is plenty of room in the liberal playbook for race-based discrimination. There's a playbook in force that liberals are supposed to follow. The playbook prescribes responses to different forms of racism, and these responses tend to be outraged responses. When no colleague or friend is threatened by charges of racism, the playbook works. But the playbook can also be a trap leading to bad decisions because discriminatory practices often implicate someone's colleague, friend, family or wider community. The trap is especially pernicious in higher education, where people tend to overestimate their liberal inclinations, and where opportunities, support and intellectual attribution are largely network-based.94 It is therefore unsurprising that a higher percentage of college-educated blacks (55 per cent) say they have been disadvantaged by their race than non-college-educated blacks (29 per cent). An even higher percentage of all blacks (81 per cent) who at some point attended college say they were treated differently because of their race: perhaps an overlooked factor in the reasons why blacks are less likely to finish college.95? In addition to the different experiences and beliefs about race to which education gives rise, a partisan divide exists, with Republicans (43 per cent) more likely than Democrats (27 per cent) to say whites, rather than blacks, experience a lot of discrimination.96 Only 37 per cent of Republicans (against 76 per cent of Democrats) say racism is a problem.97 Attitudes towards blacks also extend to other groups. From the 2016 exit polls, we know that Trump voters were more likely to support a wall along the Mexican border (85 per cent) than Clinton voters (10 per cent), to support deportation of illegal immigrants (83 per cent vs 14 per cent) and view immigration as the most pressing problem for the country (64 per cent vs 33 per cent).98? Overall, the evidence presented in this article suggests not only that education and race were strong predictors of the 2016 presidential vote, but that racism was a contributing factor.? Summary and conclusion? Trump did not create angst about America's dominant position in the world, or about white America's dominant position vis-à-vis other ethnic groups, but he tapped into these two currents more unabashedly than any other presidential candidate in postwar history. This article deconstructs ‘America first’ into two components, an international component and a domestic component, which share common symptoms (lost greatness) and common remedies (redistribution).? In the first two sections of this article, I discussed the international component, and how ‘America first’ threatens to undermine the LIO. I showed how ‘America first’ reflects concerns about American decline and American overextension in three areas: the security, trade and monetary spheres. A common theme in this narrative is how the United States is being exploited by other countries, and how disengaging from the LIO presents a better path forward. In the security area, the world should no longer count on the US to act as global policeman or to tolerate unfair burden-sharing within security alliances. In trade, the US will no longer stand by as other countries free-ride on America's openness. In the monetary realm, the dollar's global role is not as good as gold. While Trump's views on the LIO are quite idiosyncratic, and have yet to be fully implemented, declinists and proponents of retrenchment share certain aspects of this outlook.? In opposition to this perspective, I have provided broad-based metrics demonstrating that the United States remains by a long way the leading state in the world today, and argued that it would be a lot worse off under alternatives to the LIO than it has been in the postwar era and is today. A counterfactual setting, where the United States does not provide international security, would be a more uncertain and more economically fragile one, with more limited commerce and investment. A United States of America in which the commercial and financial playing field, including the dollar's role, no longer spans the globe, but is domestically confined, will reduce US prosperity and geopolitical reach. Yet there is a growing sense, correctly identified by President Trump, that America's global engagement is not benefiting all Americans.Trump can't unilaterally dismantle hegemony---administrative personnel will sustain the grand strategyLayne, 17 - University Distinguished Professor of International Affairs, and Robert M. Gates Chair in National Security, at Texas A & M University (Christopher, "The Big Forces of History," American Conservative, 2-10-2017, )Taken together, Trump’s campaign statements about foreign policy did not add up to a new vision of American grand strategy. At best, they were impressionistic, a series of hints at what a Trump administration might do rather than a road map. Moreover, some of Trump’s foreign-policy views were contradictory. How, for example, could he lead America out of the Middle East quagmire while demonstrating unrestrained bellicosity toward Iran? But whatever Trump’s jumbled foreign-policy pronouncements will add up to in policy terms, they did not signal a “neo-isolationist” foreign policy, as many of his critics have alleged. It’s always wise to be skeptical when the “I” word is injected into debates about U.S. grand strategy; usually it signals a desire to stifle debate. In fact, America has always been deeply connected with the world economically and culturally, even when it chose to remain aloof from great power conflicts abroad. So what really is meant when the term “isolationism” is invoked with respect to a specific set of grand-strategic proposals? University of Pennsylvania diplomatic historian Walter A. McDougall expressed it well in his book, Promised Land, Crusader State. Isolationism is a term of opprobrium—“a dirty word that interventionists, especially since Pearl Harbor, hurl at anyone who questions their policies.” It’s still true today, when America Firsters of 1940–41 are lumped with Charles A. Lindbergh as either overt Nazi sympathizers or as fellow travelers. Susan Dunn’s 2014 book, 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, and Hitler—The Election Amid the Storm, is an especially egregious example. In fact, most of those who believed in non-intervention in the European war in 1940–41 had sound strategic and national-interest reasons for doing so. Britain and the Soviet Union (with the help of U.S. economic support and war materiel) were tying down Nazi Germany. At the same time, geography and rapidly increasing American naval and air power effectively insulated North America from German attack. Of course, the received wisdom is that the United States was drawn into World War II because its “isolationist” policy failed. This is false. In fact, the U.S. became involved in the war because it was not isolationist enough. Far from taking a hands-off stance in 1940–41, the United States actively opposed Japan’s ambitions to become the hegemon of its own region, East Asia. American policymakers knew full well that U.S. policies toward Japan—including a crippling oil embargo—could culminate in war between the United States and Japan. Washington nevertheless deliberately ran that risk. The result was Pearl Harbor. Thus can we see that sometimes, despite the pejorative name-calling, non-interventionism (restraint, offshore balancing, even neo-isolationism, if one wants to call it that) can be a good grand strategy that keeps the United States from spilling its blood and treasure in otherwise avoidable wars of choice. Will this be Trump’s outlook and strategy? Apparently perceiving that America’s “unipolar moment” is a thing of the past, he offered a tantalizing hint that America’s “neo-isolationist moment” might be just around the corner. Specifically, his campaign comments at the least suggested that a Trump administration would recalibrate America’s alliances in Europe and East Asia, pursue rapprochement with Moscow, and curtail U.S. involvement in the Middle East. But this shouldn’t be overblown. True, Trump’s advisers want America’s European and East Asian partners to pick up more of the slack with respect to defense. But this is a purely transactional concern—over who pays how much for defense. America’s foreign-policy establishment has been wrestling with burden-sharing issues for decades, dating back almost to NATO’s beginning. And Trump’s foreign-policy team doesn’t include people who seem inclined to fundamentally rethink America’s alliance commitments. Nor is there any indication that Trump’s senior appointees share his desire to heal Washington’s relations with the Kremlin. On the contrary, they view Russia through a Cold War lens. Nor is there any reason to believe that any of his senior appointees will pick up on Trump’s suggestion that South Korea and Japan should provide their own nuclear deterrence instead of relying on the American nuclear shield. Far from disengaging from the Mideast quicksand, many key members of the Trump national-security team seem bent on plunging the United States even more deeply into the region. Indeed some, such as National Security Adviser-designate Michael Flynn, are champing at the bit to trigger a civilizational war between the United States and the Islamic world. By the same token, there is no sign that any senior Trump appointee dissents from the idea of American exceptionalism, or questions whether the United States is the world’s “indispensable nation.” In other words, the senior foreign- and defense-policy figures in the Trump administration are very much in the mold of the foreign-policy establishment types who have staffed every administration since FDR’s. There is a big reason why America’s grand strategy under Trump probably will not break in any significant way with the establishment’s post-1945 foreign-policy consensus. Even if Trump wanted to redirect U.S. grand strategy along the lines of offshore balancing and restraint, it would be nearly impossible for him to do so. Policy is decided by personnel, and there just aren’t enough qualified non-interventionist realists to fill the key positions at the assistant secretary, deputy assistant secretary, and NSC staff levels of an administration.US hegemony goodUS heg is key to restraint – aff causes entanglement, lashout, transition warMichael Beckley 15, research fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs., “The Myth of Entangling Alliances Michael Beckley Reassessing the Security Risks of U.S. Defense Pacts”, finding that U.S. entanglement is rare has important implications for international relations scholarship and U.S. foreign policy. For scholars, it casts doubt on classic theories of imperial overstretch in which great powers exhaust their resources by accumulating allies that free ride on their protection and embroil them in military quagmires.22 The U.S. experience instead suggests that great powers can dictate the terms of their security commitments and that allies often help their great power protectors avoid strategic overextension. For policy, the rarity of U.S. entanglement suggests that the United States’ current grand strategy of deep engagement, which is centered on a network of standing alliances, does not preclude, and may even facilitate, U.S. military restraint. Since 1945 the United States has been, by some measures, the most militarily active state in the world. The most egregious cases of U.S. overreach, however, have stemmed not from entangling alliances, but from the penchant of American leaders to define national interests expansively, to overestimate the magnitude of foreign threats, and to underestimate the costs of military intervention. Scrapping alliances will not correct these bad habits. In fact, disengaging from alliances may unleash the United States to intervene recklessly abroad while leaving it without partners to share the burden when those interventions go awry.U.S. hegemony is vital to global stability --- decline causes nuclear great power war --- best scholarship provesBrooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth 13 (Stephen, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, William C. Wohlforth is the Daniel Webster Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College “Don’t Come Home America: The Case Against Retrenchment,” International Security, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Winter 2012/13), pp. 7–51)A core premise of deep engagement is that it prevents the emergence of a far more dangerous global security environment. For one thing, as noted above, the United States’ overseas presence gives it the leverage to restrain partners from taking provocative action. Perhaps more important, its core alliance commitments also deter states with aspirations to regional hegemony from contemplating expansion and make its partners more secure, reducing their incentive to adopt solutions to their security problems that threaten others and thus stoke security dilemmas. The contention that engaged U.S. power dampens the baleful effects of anarchy is consistent with influential variants of realist theory. Indeed, arguably the scariest portrayal of the war-prone world that would emerge absent the “American Pacifier” is provided in the works of John Mearsheimer, who forecasts dangerous multipolar regions replete with security competition, arms races, nuclear proliferation and associated preventive war temptations, regional rivalries, and even runs at regional hegemony and full-scale great power war. 72 How do retrenchment advocates, the bulk of whom are realists, discount this benefit? Their arguments are complicated, but two capture most of the variation: (1) U.S. security guarantees are not necessary to prevent dangerous rivalries and conflict in Eurasia; or (2) prevention of rivalry and conflict in Eurasia is not a U.S. interest. Each response is connected to a different theory or set of theories, which makes sense given that the whole debate hinges on a complex future counterfactual (what would happen to Eurasia’s security setting if the United States truly disengaged?). Although a certain answer is impossible, each of these responses is nonetheless a weaker argument for retrenchment than advocates acknowledge. The first response flows from defensive realism as well as other international relations theories that discount the conflict-generating potential of anarchy under contemporary conditions. 73 Defensive realists maintain that the high expected costs of territorial conquest, defense dominance, and an array of policies and practices that can be used credibly to signal benign intent, mean that Eurasia’s major states could manage regional multipolarity peacefully without the American pacifier. Retrenchment would be a bet on this scholarship, particularly in regions where the kinds of stabilizers that nonrealist theories point to—such as democratic governance or dense institutional linkages—are either absent or weakly present. There are three other major bodies of scholarship, however, that might give decisionmakers pause before making this bet. First is regional expertise. Needless to say, there is no consensus on the net security effects of U.S. withdrawal. Regarding each region, there are optimists and pessimists. Few experts expect a return of intense great power competition in a post-American Europe, but many doubt European governments will pay the political costs of increased EU defense cooperation and the budgetary costs of increasing military outlays. 74 The result might be a Europe that is incapable of securing itself from various threats that could be destabilizing within the region and beyond (e.g., a regional conflict akin to the 1990s Balkan wars), lacks capacity for global security missions in which U.S. leaders might want European participation, and is vulnerable to the influence of outside rising powers. What about the other parts of Eurasia where the United States has a substantial military presence? Regarding the Middle East, the balance begins to swing toward pessimists concerned that states currently backed by Washington— notably Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia—might take actions upon U.S. retrenchment that would intensify security dilemmas. And concerning East Asia, pessimism regarding the region’s prospects without the American pacifier is pronounced. Arguably the principal concern expressed by area experts is that Japan and South Korea are likely to obtain a nuclear capacity and increase their military commitments, which could stoke a destabilizing reaction from China. It is notable that during the Cold War, both South Korea and Taiwan moved to obtain a nuclear weapons capacity and were only constrained from doing so by a still-engaged United States. 75 The second body of scholarship casting doubt on the bet on defensive realism’s sanguine portrayal is all of the research that undermines its conception of state preferences. Defensive realism’s optimism about what would happen if the United States retrenched is very much dependent on its particular—and highly restrictive—assumption about state preferences; once we relax this assumption, then much of its basis for optimism vanishes. Specifically, the prediction of post-American tranquility throughout Eurasia rests on the assumption that security is the only relevant state preference, with security defined narrowly in terms of protection from violent external attacks on the homeland. Under that assumption, the security problem is largely solved as soon as offense and defense are clearly distinguishable, and offense is extremely expensive relative to defense. Burgeoning research across the social and other sciences, however, undermines that core assumption: states have preferences not only for security but also for prestige, status, and other aims, and they engage in trade-offs among the various objectives. 76 In addition, they define security not just in terms of territorial protection but in view of many and varied milieu goals. It follows that even states that are relatively secure may nevertheless engage in highly competitive behavior. Empirical studies show that this is indeed sometimes the case. 77 In sum, a bet on a benign postretrenchment Eurasia is a bet that leaders of major countries will never allow these nonsecurity preferences to influence their strategic choices. To the degree that these bodies of scholarly knowledge have predictive leverage, U.S. retrenchment would result in a significant deterioration in the security environment in at least some of the world’s key regions. We have already mentioned the third, even more alarming body of scholarship. Offensive realism predicts that the withdrawal of the American pacifier will yield either a competitive regional multipolarity complete with associated insecurity, arms racing, crisis instability, nuclear proliferation, and the like, or bids for regional hegemony, which may be beyond the capacity of local great powers to contain (and which in any case would generate intensely competitive behavior, possibly including regional great power war). Hence it is unsurprising that retrenchment advocates are prone to focus on the second argument noted above: that avoiding wars and security dilemmas in the world’s core regions is not a U.S. national interest. Few doubt that the United States could survive the return of insecurity and conflict among Eurasian powers, but at what cost? Much of the work in this area has focused on the economic externalities of a renewed threat of insecurity and war, which we discuss below. Focusing on the pure security ramifications, there are two main reasons why decisionmakers may be rationally reluctant to run the retrenchment experiment. First, overall higher levels of conflict make the world a more dangerous place. Were Eurasia to return to higher levels of interstate military competition, one would see overall higher levels of military spending and innovation and a higher likelihood of competitive regional proxy wars and arming of client states—all of which would be concerning, in part because it would promote a faster diffusion of military power away from the United States. Greater regional insecurity could well feed proliferation cascades, as states such as Egypt, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia all might choose to create nuclear forces. 78 It is unlikely that proliferation decisions by any of these actors would be the end of the game: they would likely generate pressure locally for more proliferation. Following Kenneth Waltz, many retrenchment advocates are proliferation optimists, assuming that nuclear deterrence solves the security problem. 79 Usually carried out in dyadic terms, the debate over the stability of proliferation changes as the numbers go up. Proliferation optimism rests on assumptions of rationality and narrow security preferences. In social science, however, such assumptions are inevitably probabilistic. Optimists assume that most states are led by rational leaders, most will overcome organizational problems and resist the temptation to preempt before feared neighbors nuclearize, and most pursue only security and are risk averse. Confidence in such probabilistic assumptions declines if the world were to move from nine to twenty, thirty, or forty nuclear states. In addition, many of the other dangers noted by analysts who are concerned about the destabilizing effects of nuclear proliferation—including the risk of accidents and the prospects that some new nuclear powers will not have truly survivable forces—seem prone to go up as the number of nuclear powers grows. 80 Moreover, the risk of “unforeseen crisis dynamics” that could spin out of control is also higher as the number of nuclear powers increases. Finally, add to these concerns the enhanced danger of nuclear leakage, and a world with overall higher levels of security competition becomes yet more worrisome. The argument that maintaining Eurasian peace is not a U.S. interest faces a second problem. On widely accepted realist assumptions, acknowledging that U.S. engagement preserves peace dramatically narrows the difference between retrenchment and deep engagement. For many supporters of retrenchment, the optimal strategy for a power such as the United States, which has attained regional hegemony and is separated from other great powers by oceans, is offshore balancing: stay over the horizon and “pass the buck” to local powers to do the dangerous work of counterbalancing any local rising power. The United States should commit to onshore balancing only when local balancing is likely to fail and a great power appears to be a credible contender for regional hegemony, as in the cases of Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union in the midtwentieth century. The problem is that China’s rise puts the possibility of its attaining regional hegemony on the table, at least in the medium to long term. As Mearsheimer notes, “The United States will have to play a key role in countering China, because its Asian neighbors are not strong enough to do it by themselves.” 81 Therefore, unless China’s rise stalls, “the United States is likely to act toward China similar to the way it behaved toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War.” 82 It follows that the United States should take no action that would compromise its capacity to move to onshore balancing in the future. It will need to maintain key alliance relationships in Asia as well as the formidably expensive military capacity to intervene there. The implication is to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, reduce the presence in Europe, and pivot to Asia— just what the United States is doing. 83 In sum, the argument that U.S. security commitments are unnecessary for peace is countered by a lot of scholarship, including highly influential realist scholarship. In addition, the argument that Eurasian peace is unnecessary for U.S. security is weakened by the potential for a large number of nasty security consequences as well as the need to retain a latent onshore balancing capacity that dramatically reduces the savings retrenchment might bring. Moreover, switching between offshore and onshore balancing could well be dif?cult. Bringing together the thrust of many of the arguments discussed so far underlines the degree to which the case for retrenchment misses the underlying logic of the deep engagement strategy. By supplying reassurance, deterrence, and active management, the United States lowers security competition in the world’s key regions, thereby preventing the emergence of a hothouse atmosphere for growing new military capabilities. Alliance ties dissuade partners from ramping up and also provide leverage to prevent military transfers to potential rivals. On top of all this, the United States’ formidable military machine may deter entry by potential rivals. Current great power military expenditures as a percentage of GDP are at historical lows, and thus far other major powers have shied away from seeking to match top-end U.S. military capabilities. In addition, they have so far been careful to avoid attracting the “focused enmity” of the United States. 84 All of the world’s most modern militaries are U.S. allies (America’s alliance system of more than sixty countries now accounts for some 80 percent of global military spending), and the gap between the U.S. military capability and that of potential rivals is by many measures growing rather than shrinking. 85Only U.S. hegemony prevents global instability---alternatives can't maintain peaceHaass, 17 - President of the Council on Foreign Relations (Richard, "Who Will Fill America’s Shoes?," Project Syndicate, 6-24-2017, )Still, a shift away from a US-dominated world of structured relationships and standing institutions and toward something else is under way. What this alternative will be, however, remains largely unknowable. What we do know is that there is no alternative great power willing and able to step in and assume what had been the US role.China is a frequently mentioned candidate, but its leadership is focused mostly on consolidating domestic order and maintaining artificially high economic-growth rates to stave off popular unrest. China’s interest in regional and global institutions seems designed mostly to bolster its economy and geopolitical influence, rather than to help set rules and create broadly beneficial arrangements.Likewise, Russia is a country with a narrowly-based economy led by a government focused on retaining power at home and re-establishing Russian influence in the Middle East and Europe. India is preoccupied with the challenge of economic development and is tied down by its problematic relationship with Pakistan. Japan is held back by its declining population, domestic political and economic constraints, and its neighbors’ suspicions.Europe, for its part, is distracted by questions surrounding the relationship between member states and the European Union. As a result, the whole of the continent is less than the sum of its parts – none of which is large enough to succeed America on the world stage.But the absence of a single successor to the US does not mean that what awaits is chaos. At least in principle, the world’s most powerful countries could come together to fill America’s shoes. In practice, though, this will not happen, as these countries lack the capabilities, experience, and, above all, a consensus on what needs doing and who needs to do it.9-30-20 UpdateGeneral Defense: Alliance Theory A2: Entanglement---1NCEntanglement theory is false AND alliances prevent interventions ---over 60 year period, US had sixty alliances, but only 5 episodes of entanglement happened---most of the time allies restrain US---entanglement theory commits errors, exaggerate fearBeckley 15 [Michael Beckley is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Tufts University, “The Myth of Entangling Alliances”, International Security, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Spring 2015), pp. 7–48, doi:10.1162/ISEC_a_00197] **NCC Packet 2020The results of this analysis strongly support freedom of action theory. Over a sixty-two-year period in which the United States maintained more than sixty alliances, I find only five ostensible episodes of U.S. entanglement—the 1954 and 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crises, the Vietnam War, and the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. Even these cases are far from clear-cut, because in each there were other important drivers of U.S. involvement; U.S. policymakers carefully limited support for allies; allies restrained the United States from escalating its involvement; the United States deterred adversaries and allies from escalating the conflict; or all of the above. To be sure, the United States has intervened on the side of allies on numerous occasions. In most cases, however, U.S. actions were driven by an alignment of interests between the United States and its allies, not by alliance obligations. In fact, in many cases, U.S. policymakers were the main advocates of military action and cajoled reluctant allies to join the fight. In addition, there are many cases in which alliances restrained the United States, or in which the United States restrained its allies or sidestepped costly commitments. I examine only cases of military conflict and therefore cannot evaluate fully the prevalence of such cases of nonconflict. Even within my biased sample, however, there are at least four cases in which alliances prevented U.S. escalation, and another seven cases in which the United States reneged on security commitments, restrained an ally from attacking a third party, or both At worst, therefore, alliances have had a mixed effect on U.S. involvement in military conflicts—some alliances at some times have encouraged U.S. military involvement; others have discouraged it; and some have simply been ignored by U.S. policymakers. The only way to build a powerful case for entanglement theory is to commit serious methodological errors. For example, one could spin correlation as causation by characterizing cases in which the United States backed allies for self-interested reasons as cases of entanglement. One also could select on the dependent variable by highlighting evidence of entanglement while ignoring instances in which the United States shirked alliance commitments or in which alliances restrained the United States or prevented con?icts from breaking out in the first place. Such practices are common in the existing literature, but they are flawed and feed an exaggerated fear of entangling alliances in American society. The finding that U.S. entanglement is rare has important implications for international relations scholarship and U.S. foreign policy. For scholars, it casts doubt on classic theories of imperial overstretch in which great powers exhaust their resources by accumulating allies that free ride on their protection and embroil them in military quagmires.22 The U.S. experience instead suggests that great powers can dictate the terms of their security commitments and that allies often help their great power protectors avoid strategic overextension. For policy, the rarity of U.S. entanglement suggests that the United States’ current grand strategy of deep engagement, which is centered on a network of standing alliances, does not preclude, and may even facilitate, U.S. military restraint. Since 1945 the United States has been, by some measures, the most militarily active state in the world. The most egregious cases of U.S. overreach, however, have stemmed not from entangling alliances, but from the penchant of American leaders to de?ne national interests expansively, to overestimate the magnitude of foreign threats, and to underestimate the costs of military intervention. Scrapping alliances will not correct these bad habits. In fact, disengaging from alliances may unleash the United States to intervene recklessly abroad while leaving it without partners to share the burden when those interventions go awry. A2: Entanglement---2NCEntanglement is wrong---allies restrain the US and alt causes to US draw in---allies stopped Korean war, crises in Laos and Berlin---history proves allies keep troops at home, and empirics show risk is manageable Beckley 15 [Michael Beckley is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Tufts University, “The Myth of Entangling Alliances”, International Security, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Spring 2015), pp. 7–48, doi:10.1162/ISEC_a_00197] **NCC Packet 2020Conclusion American concerns about entangling alliances are as old as the Republic itself. During the post–World War II era, however, there have been only five ostensible episodes of U.S. entanglement, and even these cases are questionable. The case in which alliance obligations had the largest impact on U.S. decisionmaking (the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crisis) entailed minimal military action, and the case that entailed the most military action (the Vietnam War) contained only a marginal role for alliance politics in U.S. decisionmaking. In the other three cases (the 1954–55 Taiwan Strait crisis and the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo), both the effect of alliance obligations on U.S. policy and the costs suffered by U.S. forces were moderate. And beyond these cases, entanglement was virtually nonexistent in U.S. foreign policy. Against this limited evidence of entanglement are numerous cases in which alliances restrained the United States. Allies dissuaded the United States from escalating the Korean War and crises in Laos and Berlin, and struggled in vain to prevent the United States from entering or escalating other conflicts, the 2003 Iraq War being only the latest major example. Indeed, instances of alliance-induced restraint are evident even within the five cases of entanglement discussed above: in the 1954–55 Taiwan Strait crisis, concerns about European alliances discouraged U.S. policymakers from bombing the Chinese mainland and publicly committing to defend Jinmen and Mazu; in the Vietnam War, allies impeded U.S. entry into the war and then repeatedly im plored the United States to get out; and in Bosnia and Kosovo, U.S. allies initially restrained the United States from lashing out violently and then provided all of the NATO ground forces and most of the postcon?ict peacekeepers for the eventual operations. There also are several cases in which the United States sidestepped inconvenient alliance commitments, restrained an ally from attacking a third party, or openly sided against an ally—and this list could probably be expanded by looking within other cases, including the ?ve ostensible cases of entanglement. As explained earlier, the United States blatantly retracted a pledge to Taiwan to defend Jinmen and Mazu in 1955, refused to save the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, delegated ground operations and most of the postconflict peacekeeping in Bosnia and Kosovo to allies, and waited for eight months and the receipt of private security assurances before responding militarily to China’s provocative behavior near Taiwan in 1995–96. In sum, the empirical record shows that the risk of entanglement is real but manageable and that, for better or worse, U.S. security policy lies firmly in the hands of U.S. leaders and is shaped primarily by those leaders’ perceptions of the nation’s core interests. When the United States has overreached militarily, the main cause has not been entangling alliances but rather what Richard Betts calls “self-entrapment”—the tendency of U.S. leaders to define national interests expansively, to exaggerate the magnitude of foreign threats, and to underestimate the costs of military intervention.188 Developing a disciplined defense policy therefore will require the emergence of prudent leadership, the development (or resurrection) of guidelines governing the use of force,189 the establishment of domestic institutional constraints on the president’s authority to send U.S. forces into battle, or some combination of these.190 Scrapping alliances, by contrast, would simply unleash the United States to act on its interventionist impulses while leaving it isolated diplomatically and militarily. To be sure, certain alliances may need to be revised or dissolved as circumstances change. Past performance is no guarantee of future results, and U.S. entanglement risk may shift over time. For example, China’s development of antiaccess/area-denial capabilities may substantially increase the risks to the United States of maintaining alliance commitments in East Asia.191 Conversely, U.S. allies may be able to use similar capabilities to defend themselves and thereby allow the United States to maintain alliance commitments while limiting risks to U.S. forces.192 This study does not account for such emerging trends and, therefore, cannot rule out the possibility that the U.S. alliance network will need to be revised in the future. What this study does suggest, however, is that such revisions should be modest. The historical record shows that allies often help keep U.S. troops at home not only by bearing some of the burden for U.S. wars, but also by encouraging the United States to stay out of wars altogether. Large-scale retrenchment would sacrifice these and other benefits of alliances while doing little to compel U.S. leaders to define national interests modestly or choose military interventions selectively. How to accomplish those goals will continue to be the subject of debate, but those debates will be more productive if they focus on domestic culprits rather than foreign friends.A2: Alliance Causes Chinese Aggression---1NCThe aff has it backwards – china loves the alliance – it checks back Japan---China doesn’t want a nuclear japan and recognizes that US alliance maintains thatGlassman 18 [Brad Glosserman is deputy director of and visiting professor at the Tama University Center for Rule Making Strategies in Japan, and a senior advisor at Pacific Forum International, a Honolulu-based think tank; he previously served there as executive director for 16 years. He was a member of?The Japan Times?editorial board from 1991 to 2001 and continues to serve as a contributing editor there, “Japan’s Disarmament Tightropes and Triangulation, Japan’s Foreign Relations in Asia book, 1/2/18, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020Japan’s nuclear policies and their inconsistencies are largely irrelevant to its relationship with China. For Beijing, Japan’s quest for disarmament is hypocritical since Tokyo enjoys the benefits conferred by the US nuclear umbrella; an irritant (Japan suspended aid to China after its last nuclear test in 1995); or a point of convergence: Beijing is committed to nuclear disarmament but it is waiting for the US and Russia to reduce their arsenals to levels equal to that of China before it considers shrinking its own stock of nuclear weapons. China acknowledges that the US extended deterrent has prevented Japan from going nuclear and thus serves Chinese interests. A2: Alliance Causes Chinese Aggression---2NCChina loves the alliance – it ‘holds the cork’ on Japanese capabilities ---it prevents Japan from developing a stronger military and nukes which China would hate Vogel 19 [Professor Ezra F. Vogel?is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard University. He has had a long association with Harvard, receiving his Ph.D. in sociology there in 1958, and then teaching at the university from 1967 to 2000, “Japan and China: Facing History,” Chapter 11 pg. 581-583 of the book, 7/30/19, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020Yet faced with a strong China, the Japanese have every reason to maintain their ties to the United States, which have grown stronger and deeper in the?seven decades since World War II. The Japanese have close relations with the?United States in every sphere—military, political, economic, and cultural. There?is a high level of comfort between the Americans and the Japanese, and an open?exchange of ideas and opinions. Although some in China have an interest in ex-?panding relations with Japan, it is not in China’s interest to detach Japan from?the U.S.-Japan military alliance, for an independent Japan would develop a?stronger military and possibly develop nuclear weapons to defend itself. The?Chinese have not erased their image of the Japanese as a militaristic aggressive?people, and they believe that the U.S.-Japan Alliance can still help keep the cork?in the bottle. Japanese strategists are aware that the Chinese economy will soon?be several times larger than their own, that China is putting far more resources?into its military than Japan could match, and that Japan’s military manpower cannot compare with that of China, which has ten times the population. The Japanese are therefore firmly committed to cooperation with the U.S. military. Though the Japanese are prepared to increase their cooperation with China, their relationship with the U.S. military and the U.S. government since 1945 has?made the Japanese feel far more secure working with Americans than with an?authoritarian Chinese government that has expressed so much hostility toward?Japan.China hates Japan rearm not the alliance---either aff causes it OR it’s inevitable ---China knows US isn’t a threat because they have good relations, but if Japan builds up its military, that’s scaryWang 17 [Chi Wang, a former head of the Chinese section of the US Library of Congress and former university librarian at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is president of the US-China Policy Foundation, “Why the US is no threat to China, but a remilitarised Japan, led by Shinzo Abe, may well be”, 11-5, ] IanM **NCC Packet 2020Japan’s planned restoration of its military and the continued election of conservative politicians are threatening events for countries it invaded in the past. I was in the sixth grade in 1942, living with my family in Hong Kong, when the Japanese invaded . I watched as Japanese torpedoes entered the harbour and killed British troops. Japanese shell shrapnel damaged our house, blinding one of our household staff and killing another. Trapped indoors in fear of the occupying military, we were left with very little food and water for nearly 25 days – and we were among the lucky ones. Japan’s modern-day actions must be interpreted through the lens of the second world war. Abe’s visit in 2013 to the Yasukuni Shrine, the resting place of almost 1,000 war criminals from that conflict, was for many a sign of his disregard for the atrocities committed abroad by the Japanese. Because of his family history, his actions and his own hopes for the remilitarisation of Japan’s armed forces, Abe has failed to set to rest any worries about the military. The US, on the other hand, is not a threat to China. Although it has competed and will continue to compete with China on trade , it has never invaded. It never will. In the 20th century, the normalisation of Sino-US relations , both economic and political, gave China the opportunity to enter the world stage. Even during periods of tense relations, America has helped China and endeavoured to engage, in the interests of better cooperation. China need not worry about a threat from the US but, if Abe abolishes Article 9 of its constitution, the future trajectory of Japan’s military will be threatening indeed.China prefers alliance to Japanese rearm ---China will work within current alliance security framework because they fear a stronger Japan Stephen Ellis 14, is a doctoral candidate at the University of Leicester, "How U.S. Military Power Benefits China," 3-13-2014, Diplomat, , DOA: 9-13-2015, y2k **NCC Packet 2020The United States security commitment to Japan has for over six decades allowed Tokyo to “free ride” on U.S. military power in East Asia, and this has meant that Japan has not built up a conventional military capability in keeping with the size and wealth of its economy. Whilst Japan is undoubtedly today an important military actor within the region, it is highly likely that it would possess far greater conventional military capabilities were it not for the credible security guarantee provided to Japan by the strong U.S. military presence in the region. Whilst Japanese free-riding may or may not serve U.S. interests, the fact that the U.S. security guarantee has served to limit the size and power of Japan’s conventional military is highly beneficial for Beijing, given China and Japan’s history of hostility and conflict, current territorial disputes and their growing competition to be the lead East Asian nation. If in the future China was to somehow succeed in driving the United States militarily out of East Asia, Tokyo would likely respond to diminishing U.S. regional power by significantly bolstering its own conventional military capabilities. For China, this would be something of a pyrrhic victory, as Beijing would have only succeeded in replacing the U.S. presence with growing Japanese military power, something China would likely view as a much more significant threat. Thus, pushing the United States militarily out of the East Asia may prove to be of questionable value to Beijing and could even worsen China’s strategic position with regard to Japan. Given this, Beijing may instead look to continue to rise and operate within the existing regional framework built and maintained by the deployment of significant U.S. military power, which has so far proved highly effective at limiting Japan’s conventional military capabilities and aspirations.China and Korea hate the aff and love the alliance – they don’t trust Japan---they think the alliance restrains Japan from both building and acting aggressively in the regionChristensen 99 [Thomas J. Christensen?is Professor of Public and International Affairs and Director of the?China and the World Program?at Columbia University.? He arrived in 2018 from Princeton University where he was William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War, Director of the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, and faculty director of the Masters of Public Policy Program and the Truman Scholars Program, "China, the U.S.-Japan Alliance, and the Security Dilemma In East Asia," Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Spring 1999, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020Chinese security analysts, particularly military officers, fear that Japan could again become a great military great power in the first quarter of the twentyfirst century. Such a Japan, they believe, would likely be more independent of US. control and generally more assertive in international affairs. If one considers threats posed only by military power and not who is wielding that power, one might expect Beijing to welcome the reduction or even elimination of U.S. influence in Japan, even if this meant China would have a more powerful neighbor. After all, the United States is still by far the most powerful military actor in the Western Pacific.6 However, given China’s historically rooted and visceral distrust of Japan, Beijing would fear either a breakdown of the U.S.-Japan alliance or a significant upgrading of Japan’s role within that allian~e.~ This sentiment is shared outside China as well, particularly in Korea. Although Chinese analysts presently fear US. power much more than Japanese power, in terms of national intentions, Chinese analysts view Japan with much less trust and, in many cases, with a loathing rarely found in their attitudes about the United StatesA2: Encirclement Fears---Alt Causes---1NCAlt causes to encirclement Katagiri 19 [Nori Katagiri?is Associate Professor of Political Science at Saint Louis University. He is also Visiting Research Fellow, Air Staff College, Japan Air Self-Defence Force and Fellow Cohort 4 of the Mansfield Foundation’s US-Japan Network for the Future. He received his PhD degree in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania., "Evolution of Sino-Japanese Relations: Implications for Northeast Asia and Beyond," E-International Relations, 4-10-2019, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020Japan’s growing military ties with some of the Southeast Asian and South Asian states – especially the Philippines, India, and Australia – allow it to have an encirclement strategy against China. The ties with the Philippines allow SDF ships to operate near the contested areas of the South China Sea, both with the US Navy and independently. Japan’s reasoning for this is not to aggressively act against the Chinese Navy but rather to secure sea lanes and freedom of navigation as much of Japan’s energy import comes through the Strait of Malacca. Common strategic sense pulls Japan and India together to tighten commerce, weapons sales, and officer exchange. India and Japan also view Chinese advances into the Indian Ocean as harmful to their interests. India has historically abhorred making foreign commitments and is geographically distant from Japan, but both nations meet periodically to discuss methods of cooperation. Finally, Australia remains wary about China’s advance and is a regular participant in multilateral military exercises that include the SDF.A2: Encirclement Fears---Alt Causes---2NCQUAD is a major alt cause to Chinese Encirclement fears Buchan and Rimland 20 [Patrick Gerard Buchan is a Director, the U.S. Alliances Project and Fellow, Indo-Pacific Security, Benjamin Rimland is a research Associate, Alliances and American Leadership Program, "Defining the Diamond: The Past, Present, and Future of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue," No Publication, 3-16-2020, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020Just as it did during the initial Quad in 2007, China has officially protested Quad 2.0 as a thinly veiled attempt at containment. Editorials in state-run Chinese media have regularly lambasted the grouping as a threat to not simply China’s own ascent to power but also traditional diplomatic touchstones such as ASEAN centrality; further criticism can also be readily found attacking the Quad nations for insufficient care regarding the infrastructure needs of Southeast Asian nations.38?The United States did not aid its case for an inclusive Quad when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made clear in an October 2019 speech to the Heritage Foundation that the Quad would “[ensure] that China retains only its proper place in the world,” an allusion to containment that made waves in the Australian foreign policy community.39General Defense: Impact Defense A2: Sino-Japanese War---1NCNo Sino Japan war – economic interdependence and domestic politics tamp down tensions Johnson 19 [Jesse Johnson is a staff writer for Japan Times citing professor from Lehigh University, “Tenuous ties: Few signs of substance behind warming Sino-Japanese relations as communist China marks 70th anniversary”, 9-30, ] IanM **NCC Packet 2020Economic equilibrium Despite these security concerns, one area where the two countries have maintained more of a semblance of equilibrium has been the economic sphere — especially as the U.S., Japan’s top ally, wages a bitter trade war against China. Some experts have said that the economic conflict could push Japan and Abe, who has also had to deal with his own trade threats from Trump, closer to China. “Abe is suspicious of China, but realistic enough to accept that a perpetual state of high tension with China is not in Japan’s interests,” said Hughes. He “is clearly close to the U.S. on many security issues that relate to China, but on economic issues, Japan is worried that the United States’ ire on trade might also turn on Japan and that the U.S. is doing damage to the current international trading order.” Nevertheless, Abe has successfully managed to negotiate the “first stage” of a new trade deal last Wednesday that both appeared to placate Trump’s onerous demands and minimize the economic fallout for Japan. But with both countries facing sustained economic pressure from the White House, the two economic giants will also be looking to use their improved ties to uphold the free-trade regime. Zhang Baohui, director of Lingnan University’s Center for Asian Pacific Studies in Hong Kong, noted that although the Trump factor “is one of several … motivating Japan to improve ties with China,” Abe’s efforts to improve relations with China started significantly earlier than the current U.S. administration. “China is … Japan’s largest trading partner, a plain fact that cannot be ignored,” he said. What’s more, he added, good relations with China “will also reduce domestic opposition to constitutional reform, which remains an important agenda of Abe.”A2: Sino-Japanese War---2NCNo Sino-Japan War: 1---China fears loss of legitimacy Ghosh 14 [Bobby Ghosh is a researcher for Time, “Will Japan and China Go to War?”, 1-22, ] IanM **NCC Packet 2020China would have the most to lose from war, Abe suggested, pointing out that conflict would slow the economic growth that the government in Beijing needs to preserve its legitimacy. The Prime Minister made no mention of the cost to his own country, but allowed that a Sino-Japanese war would disrupt the world economy.2---Dooms Xi and CCP politically Moss 13 [Trefor Moss is an independent journalist based in Hong Kong. He covers Asian politics, defence and security, and was Asia-Pacific Editor at Jane’s Defence Weekly until 2009, “7 Reasons China and Japan Won’t Go To War”, 2-10, ] IanM **NCC Packet 20201. Beijing’s nightmare scenario. China might well win a war against Japan, but defeat would also be a very real possibility. As China closes the book on its “century of humiliation” and looks ahead to prouder times, the prospect of a new, avoidable humiliation at the hands of its most bitter enemy is enough to persuade Beijing to do everything it can to prevent that outcome (the surest way being not to have a war at all). Certainly, China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, does not want to go down in history as the man who led China into a disastrous conflict with the Japanese. In that scenario, Xi would be doomed politically, and, as China’s angry nationalism turned inward, the Communist Party probably wouldn’t survive either.3---Economic interdependence Moss 13 [Trefor Moss is an independent journalist based in Hong Kong. He covers Asian politics, defence and security, and was Asia-Pacific Editor at Jane’s Defence Weekly until 2009, “7 Reasons China and Japan Won’t Go To War”, 2-10, ] IanM **NCC Packet 20202. Economic interdependence. Win or lose, a Sino-Japanese war would be disastrous for both participants. The flagging economy that Abe is trying to breathe life into with a $117 billion stimulus package would take a battering as the lucrative China market was closed off to Japanese business. China would suffer, too, as Japanese companies pulled out of a now-hostile market, depriving up to 5 million Chinese workers of their jobs, even as Xi Jinping looks to double per capita income by 2020. Panic in the globalized economy would further depress both economies, and potentially destroy the programs of both countries’ new leaders.4---PLA isn’t confident they can win---they won’t risk it Moss 13 [Trefor Moss is an independent journalist based in Hong Kong. He covers Asian politics, defence and security, and was Asia-Pacific Editor at Jane’s Defence Weekly until 2009, “7 Reasons China and Japan Won’t Go To War”, 2-10, ] IanM **NCC Packet 20203. Question marks over the PLA’s operational effectiveness. The People’s Liberation Army is rapidly modernizing, but there are concerns about how effective it would prove if pressed into combat today – not least within China’s own military hierarchy. New Central Military Commission Vice-Chairman Xu Qiliang recently told the PLA Daily that too many PLA exercises are merely for show, and that new elite units had to be formed if China wanted to protect its interests. CMC Chairman Xi Jinping has also called on the PLA to improve its readiness for “real combat.” Other weaknesses within the PLA, such as endemic corruption, would similarly undermine the leadership’s confidence in committing it to a risky war with a peer adversary.5---China promotes peaceful solutions empirics prove Moss 13 [Trefor Moss is an independent journalist based in Hong Kong. He covers Asian politics, defence and security, and was Asia-Pacific Editor at Jane’s Defence Weekly until 2009, “7 Reasons China and Japan Won’t Go To War”, 2-10, ] IanM **NCC Packet 20206. China’s policy of avoiding military confrontation. China has always said that it favors peaceful solutions to disputes, and its actions have tended to bear this out. In particular, it continues to usually dispatch unarmed or only lightly armed law enforcement ships to maritime flashpoints, rather than naval ships. There have been calls for a more aggressive policy in the nationalist media, and from some military figures; but Beijing has not shown much sign of heeding them. The PLA Navy made a more active intervention in the dispute this week when one of its frigates trained its radar on a Japanese naval vessel. This was a dangerous and provocative act of escalation, but once again the Chinese action was kept within bounds that made violence unlikely (albeit, needlessly, more likely than before).6---Hurts China’s long term regional and diplomatic goals Moss 13 [Trefor Moss is an independent journalist based in Hong Kong. He covers Asian politics, defence and security, and was Asia-Pacific Editor at Jane’s Defence Weekly until 2009, “7 Reasons China and Japan Won’t Go To War”, 2-10, ] IanM **NCC Packet 20207. China’s socialization. China has spent too long?telling the world that it poses no threat to?peace?to turn around and fulfill all the China-bashers’ prophecies. Already, China’s reputation in Southeast Asia has taken a hit over its handling of territorial disputes there. If it were cast as the guilty party in a conflict with Japan –which already has the sympathy of many East Asian countries where tensions China are concerned – China would see regional opinion harden against it further still. This is not what Beijing wants: It seeks to influence regional affairs diplomatically from within, and to realize “win-win” opportunities with its international partners.A2: US-China War---1NCNo US-China war – nor accidental escalationTimothy Heath 17, senior international defense research analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and member of the Pardee RAND Graduate School faculty, and William R. Thompson, Distinguished and Rogers Professor at Indiana University and an adjunct researcher at RAND, "U.S.-China Tensions Are Unlikely to Lead to War", National Interest, **NCC Packet 2020Graham Allison's April 12 article, “ How America and China Could Stumble to War ,” explores how misperceptions and bureaucratic dysfunction could accelerate a militarized crisis involving the United States and China into an unwanted war. However, the article fails to persuade because it neglects the key political and geostrategic conditions that make war plausible in the first place. Without those conditions in place, the risk that a crisis could accidentally escalate into war becomes far lower. The U.S.-China relationship today may be trending towards greater tension, but the relative stability and overall low level of hostility make the prospect of an accidental escalation to war extremely unlikely. In a series of scenarios centered around the South China Sea, Taiwan and the East China Sea, Allison explored how well-established flashpoints involving China and the United States and its allies could spiral into unwanted war. Allison’s article argues that given the context of strategic rivalry between a rising power and a status-quo power, organizational and bureaucratic misjudgments increase the likelihood of unintended escalation. According to Allison, “the underlying stress created by China’s disruptive rise creates conditions in which accidental, otherwise inconsequential events could trigger a large-scale conflict.” This argument appears persuasive on its surface, in no small part because it evokes insights from some of Allison’s groundbreaking work on the organizational pathologies that made the Cuban Missile Crisis so dangerous. However, Allison ultimately fails to persuade because he fails to specify the political and strategic conditions that make war plausible in the first place. Allison’s analysis implies that the United States and China are in a situation analogous to that of the Soviet Union and the United States in the early 1960s. In the Cold War example, the two countries faced each other on a near-war footing and engaged in a bitter geostrategic and ideological struggle for supremacy. The two countries experienced a series of militarized crises and fought each other repeatedly through proxy wars. It was this broader context that made issues of misjudgment so dangerous in a crisis. By contrast, the U.S.-China relationship today operates at a much lower level of hostility and threat. China and the United States may be experiencing an increase in tensions, but the two countries remain far from the bitter, acrimonious rivalry that defined the U.S.-Soviet relationship in the early 1960s. Neither Washington nor Beijing regards the other as its principal enemy. Today’s rivals may view each other warily as competitors and threats on some issues, but they also view each other as important trade partners and partners on some shared concerns, such as North Korea, as the recent summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping illustrated. The behavior of their respective militaries underscores the relatively restrained rivalry. The military competition between China and the United States may be growing, but it operates at a far lower level of intensity than the relentless arms racing that typified the U.S.-Soviet standoff. And unlike their Cold War counterparts, U.S. and Chinese militaries are not postured to fight each other in major wars. Moreover, polls show that the people of the two countries regard each other with mixed views —a considerable contrast from the hostile sentiment expressed by the U.S. and Soviet publics for each other. Lacking both preparations for major war and a constituency for conflict, leaders and bureaucracies in both countries have less incentive to misjudge crisis situations in favor of unwarranted escalation. To the contrary, political leaders and bureaucracies currently face a strong incentive to find ways of defusing crises in a manner that avoids unwanted escalation. This inclination manifested itself in the EP-3 airplane collision off Hainan Island in 2001, and in subsequent incidents involving U.S. and Chinese ships and aircraft, such as the harassment of the USNS Impeccable in 2009. This does not mean that there is no risk, however. Indeed, the potential for a dangerous militarized crisis may be growing. Moreover, key political and geostrategic developments could shift the incentives for leaders in favor of more escalatory options in a crisis and thereby make Allison’s scenarios more plausible. Past precedents offer some insight into the types of developments that would most likely propel the U.S.-China relationship into a hostile, competitive one featuring an elevated risk of conflict. The most important driver, as Allison recognizes, would be a growing parity between China and the United States as economic, technological and geostrategic leaders of the international system. The United States and China feature an increasing parity in the size of their economies, but the United States retains a considerable lead in virtually every other dimension of national power. The current U.S.-China rivalry is a regional one centered on the Asia-Pacific region, but it retains the considerable potential of escalating into a global, systemic competition down the road. A second important driver would be the mobilization of public opinion behind the view that the other country is a primary source of threat, thereby providing a stronger constituency for escalatory policies. A related development would be the formal designation by leaders in both capitals of the other country as a primary hostile threat and likely foe. These developments would most likely be fueled by a growing array of intractable disputes, and further accelerated by a serious militarized crisis. The cumulative effect would be the exacerbation of an antagonistic competitive rivalry, repeated and volatile militarized crisis, and heightened risk that any flashpoint could escalate rapidly to war—a relationship that would resemble the U.S.-Soviet relationship in the early 1960s. Yet even if the relationship evolved towards a more hostile form of rivalry, unique features of the contemporary world suggest lessons drawn from the past may have limited applicability. Economic interdependence in the twenty-first century is much different and far more complex than in it was in the past. So is the lethality of weaponry available to the major powers. In the sixteenth century, armies fought with pikes, swords and primitive guns. In the twenty-first century, it is possible to eliminate all life on the planet in a full-bore nuclear exchange. These features likely affect the willingness of leaders to escalate in a crisis in a manner far differently than in past rivalries. More broadly, Allison’s analysis about the “Thucydides Trap” may be criticized for exaggerating the risks of war. In his claims to identify a high propensity for war between “rising” and “ruling” countries, he fails to clarify those terms, and does not distinguish the more dangerous from the less volatile types of rivalries. Contests for supremacy over land regions, for example, have historically proven the most conflict-prone, while competition for supremacy over maritime regions has, by contrast, tended to be less lethal. Rivalries also wax and wane over time, with varying levels of risks of war. A more careful review of rivalries and their variety, duration and patterns of interaction suggests that although most wars involve rivalries, many rivals avoid going to war. Misperceptions and strategic accidents remain a persistent feature of international politics, and it may well be that that mistakes are more likely to be lethal in periods of adjustment in relative power configurations. Rising states do have problems negotiating status quo changes with states that have staked out their predominance earlier. Even so, the probability of war between China and the United States is almost certainly far less than the 75 percent predicted by Allison. If the leaders of both countries can continue to find ways to dampen the trends towards hostile rivalry and maintain sufficient cooperation to manage differences, then there is good reason to hope that the risk of war can be lowered further still.A2: US-China War---2NCNo US-China war – bunch of warrants in the 1nc Heath evMost recent ev – diplomatic ties, economic interdependence, geography, nuclear postures, balancing powers, no ideological conflict – any crisis won’t escalate Shifrinson 2/9/19 (Joshua, assistant professor of international relations at Boston University, “The ‘new Cold War’ with China is way overblown. Here’s why,” ) **NCC Packet 2020Is a new Cold War looming — or already present — between the United States and China? Many analysts argue that a combination of geopolitics, ideology and competing visions of “global order” are driving the two countries toward emulating the Soviet-U.S. rivalry that dominated world politics from 1947 through 1990. But such concerns are overblown. Here are four big reasons why. 1. The historical backdrops of the two relationships are very different When the Cold War began, the U.S.-Soviet relationship was fragile and tenuous. Bilateral diplomatic relations were barely a decade old, U.S. intervention in the Russian Revolution was a recent memory, and the Soviet Union had called for the overthrow of capitalist governments into the 1940s. Despite their Grand Alliance against Nazi Germany, the two countries shared few meaningful diplomatic, economic or institutional links. In 2019, the situation between the United States and China is very different. Since the 1970s, diplomatic interactions, institutional ties and economic flows have all exploded. Although each side has criticized the other for domestic interference (such as U.S. demands for journalist access to Tibet and China’s espionage against U.S. corporations), these issues did not prevent cooperation on a host of other issues. Yes, there were tensions over the past decade, but these occurred against a generally cooperative backdrop. 2. Geography and powers’ nuclear postures suggest East Asia is more stable than Cold War-era Europe The Cold War was shaped by an intense arms race, nuclear posturing and crises, especially in continental Europe. Given Europe’s political geography, the United States feared a “bolt from the blue” attack would allow the Soviet Union to conquer the continent. Accordingly, the United States prepared to defend Europe with conventional forces, and to deter Soviet aggrandizement using nuclear weapons. Unsurprisingly, the Soviet Union also feared that the United States might attack and wanted to deter U.S. adventurism. Concerns that the other superpower might use force and that crises could quickly escalate colored Cold War politics. Today, the United States and China spend proportionally far less on their militaries than the United States and the Soviet Union did. Though an arms race may be emerging, U.S. and Chinese nuclear postures are not nearly as large or threatening: Arsenals remain far below the size and scope witnessed in the Cold War, and are kept at a lower state of alert. As for geography, East Asia is not primed for tensions akin to those in Cold War Europe. China can threaten to coerce its neighbors, but the water barriers separating China from most of Asia’s strategically important states make outright conquest significantly harder. Of course, as scholars such as Caitlin Talmadge and Avery Goldstein note, crises may still erupt, and each side may face pressures to escalate. Unlike the Cold War, however, U.S.-Chinese confrontations occur at sea with relatively limited forces and without clear territorial boundaries. This suggests there are countervailing factors that may give the two sides room to negotiate — and limit the speed with which a crisis unfolds. 3. The Cold War had just two major powers The Cold War took place in a bipolar system, with the United States and Soviet Union uniquely powerful, compared with other nations. This dynamic often pushed the United States and the U.S.S.R. toward confrontation and contributed to more or less fixed alliances; moreover, it encouraged efforts to suppress prospective great powers, such as Germany. In 2019, it’s not at all clear we are back to bipolarity. Analysts remain divided over whether the U.S. unipolar era is waning (or is already over) — and, if so, whether we are heading for a new period of bipolarity, modern-day multipolarity or something else. Regardless, most analysts accept that other countries will play a central role in East Asian security affairs. Russia, for example, still benefits from legacy military investments, India is developing economically and militarily, and Japan is beginning to build highly capable military forces to complement its still-significant economic might. Even if these nations aren’t as powerful as the United States or China, their presence makes for more fluid diplomatic arrangements and more diffuse security concerns than during the U.S.-Soviet competition. The resulting security dynamics are therefore likely to look very different. 4. Ideology plays less of a role in U.S.-Chinese relations Many people see the Cold War as an ideological contest between U.S.-backed liberalism and Soviet-backed communism. But that’s not the whole story. The early 20th century saw liberalism, communism and fascism vie for ideological preeminence. With fascism defeated alongside Nazi Germany, the postwar stage was set for a struggle between communism and liberalism to reinforce the U.S.-Soviet contest. That each ideology claimed universal scope ensured that the ideologies served as rallying cries for Third World conflicts, which were subsequently associated with the U.S.-Soviet struggle. The respective “ideologies” of the United States and China do not favor this type of contest today. Indeed, analysts calling for a hard-line stance against China have faced difficulties even identifying a coherent Chinese ideological alternative. And while some researchers claim that a nascent ideological contest pitting an “autocratic” China against the “liberal” United States is emerging, this narrative ignores the political contests that shape Chinese politics (and have parallels in U.S. politics). Autocracies and democracies often cooperate. And on one important ideological issue — how they organize their economic lives — China and the United States have both embraced economic growth via trade, the private sector and semi-free markets. Likewise, while a clearer Chinese ideological “brand” may eventually emerge, it is unclear whether the ideology would claim universal applicability. This is not to deny that there are tensions between the United States and China. What we are seeing, however, is not a new cold war but a reversion to a pre-1945 form of great power politics. What changed? Put simply, the United States no longer enjoys preeminence as the only superpower, as it did in the immediate post-Cold War era. The ideological, historical and geopolitical differences between today and the Cold War years far outweigh the similarities. As David Edelstein notes, at times it’s hard to understand what the United States and China are competing over. If that’s true, then there’s reason to believe there are more nuanced ways of understanding the tensions — and options for managing great power politics — than a Cold War reboot.GeographyKeck 17 [Zachary Keck is the Wohlstetter Public Affairs Fellow at the?Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, “The 2 Forgotten Reasons China and America Probably Won't Go to War”, 8-26, ] IanM **NCC Packet 2020In recent years, many observers have woken up to the fact that a war between the United States and China is not unthinkable. Although this is true, there are still strong pacifying forces. Two factors strike me as the most important. The first, and most obvious one, is that both sides maintain secure nuclear arsenals. As Thomas Schelling and others have pointed out, nuclear weapons are not a game-changer simply because of their massive destructive capabilities. The speed and certainty of nuclear retaliation is just as important. These two characteristics simply aren’t present with conventional weapons. Leaders can delude themselves into thinking their conventional forces, however improbably, will end up victorious in battle. In any case, the consequences of being wrong are far in the future. For instance, Imperial Japanese leaders knew it was a tremendous gamble to take on the United States. Isoroku Yamamoto, the Japanese admiral who planned Pearl Harbor, warned his civilian leadership beforehand: “In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.” After the American economic embargo, however, Japanese leaders were only faced with bad options: capitulating in the face of American pressure or fighting a more powerful enemy in a likely futile effort. In these circumstances, Tokyo decided to gamble. After all, it was conceivable that America would be so exhausted from fighting Nazi Germany in Europe that it would ultimately sue for peace in Asia, especially in the face of fierce Japanese resistance. While the outcome of conventional wars hinges on a number of unknowable factors, nuclear retaliation is certain. And, unlike with conventional weapons—especially before airplanes and missiles—one doesn’t have to defeat the other side’s military to wreak havoc on its cities. Nuclear weapons can do so immediately. Moreover, as Robert Jervis points out, when two countries with secure, thermonuclear arsenals go to war, “the side that is ‘losing’ the war as judged by various measures of military capability can inflict as much destruction on the side that is ‘winning’ as the ‘winner’ can on the ‘loser.’” This changes the calculation of leaders, and makes it inconceivable that rational leaders would opt for total war. This is not foolproof of course— there is still the possibility that miscalculations, gradual escalation, or the “threats that leave something to chance” will produce an outcome neither side wanted— but it is a strong incentive for peace. While it is widely recognized that nuclear weapons make a U.S.-China conflict less likely, the pacifying effect of geography is often overlooked. Geography works to attenuate tensions in two interrelated ways. First, both China and the United States are massive countries that would be extremely difficult to conquer and occupy. Second, both are separated by the largest ocean on earth, and it is extremely difficult to project power over large bodies of water. As John Mearsheimer has written: “When great powers are separated by large bodies of water, they usually do not have much offensive capability against each other, regardless of the relative size of their armies. Large bodies of water are formidable obstacles that cause significant power-projection problems for attacking armies.” These two geographical factors reduce the intensity of the so-called security dilemma. Despite all their disputes over issues like Taiwan and the East and South China Seas, China and the United States generally do not have to fear that the other side will seek to invade and conquer them. This has usually not been the case for rising and ruling powers that went to war. In many of these instances, the rivals were located on the same continent or even shared a border, which generated significant insecurity and led to conflict. As Mearsheimer again explains, “Great powers located on the same landmass are in a much better position to attack and conquer each other. That is especially true of states that share a common border. Therefore, great powers separated by water are likely to fear each other less than great powers that can get at each other over land.”Just like nuclear weapons, these geographical factors are not an absolute guarantee against conflict. Japan and the United States went to war despite being separated by the Pacific Ocean, and so did Spain and the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. Still, China and America’s large land size and separation are both conducive to peace, and—combined with nuclear weapons—provide hope that they can avoid conflict.Self-interest Bandow 12 (May 7, Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, ) **NCC Packet 2020*Note: Zhongnanhai is the compound that houses the Communist PartyStill, while the PRC’s trajectory is uncertain, China almost certainly will become a stronger competitor to the U.S. Even so, Beijing does not want conflict. Commerce has brought riches, which have helped satisfy an emerging middle class. Derail the economic gravy train and the unelected Communist Party will lose its legitimacy. Challenge America militarily and risk losing a devastating war. The residents of Zhongnanhai are ambitious, not suicidal. Anyway, the U.S. would do better to improve its game than complain. Washington’s dominance over the last two or three decades has been unnatural and will inevitably decline. Accommodating rather than resisting change will better preserve American power and influence. Particularly important will be strengthening economic competitiveness and diplomatic skills. Instead of simply issuing demands when it wants something from the PRC, such as support against Iran and North Korea, America will need to persuade Beijing that the policy is in the latter’s interest as well. As for security, the U.S. and China are bound to have disagreements over the years, but none should threaten vital American interests and thus lead to conflict. Rather than confront militarily a nuclear-armed power in its own region over interests which it views as essential, Washington should expect its allies to do much more in their own defense. Perhaps the toughest challenge will continue to be human rights. Washington long has supported democracy and liberty only in the breach. During the Cold War the U.S. backed a gaggle of thugs since they were anti-Communists. Even today Washington cheers democracy activists in the Middle East—except in Bahrain, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Human rights in Central Asia are a painful afterthought when it comes to U.S. military bases. Anti-democratic excesses among friends such as Malaysia, Pakistan, and Singapore are passed by. And grievous human rights problems in Afghanistan and Iraq are embarrassments best ignored. Still, the fact that Washington often is hypocritical doesn’t change the fact that Beijing remains a tough authoritarian system which sometimes deploys brutal repression. Human rights are universal and Americans should promote liberty when possible. Yet the Chen saga reminds us that principle must be leavened with pragmatism when dealing with other nations. U.S. power is limited. Washington has found it impossible to compel smaller and weaker, even impoverished, starving states—Burma, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Serbia, Syria—to do its bidding. All of these ignored ever tougher sanctions, several rebuffed military threats, and a couple even resisted military attacks. America’s ability to compel China to respect human rights is even less. Wei Jingsheng, another courageous Chinese human rights activist, complained: “The Chinese leadership does not fear the United States government; it only fears the loss of its power.” But that is simple reality. War is unthinkable. Sanctions would leave America friendless across Asia and Europe, undermine the weak U.S. economy, and turn Beijing into an active adversary if not enemy. Which leaves diplomacy and publicity.Neither will gamble with nukes Keck 17 Zachary Keck, Zachary Keck is the Wohlstetter Public Affairs Fellow at the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. Before that, he was a researcher at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Previously, he was the managing editor of The National Interest. Keck has also been the managing editor of The Diplomat. “The 2 Forgotten Reasons China and America Probably Won't Go to War.” The National Interest. August 26, 2017. **NCC Packet 2020In recent years, many observers have woken up to the fact that a war between the United States and China is not unthinkable. Although this is true, there are still strong pacifying forces. Two factors strike me as the most important. The first, and most obvious one, is that both sides maintain secure nuclear arsenals. As Thomas Schelling and others have pointed out, nuclear weapons are not a game-changer simply because of their massive destructive capabilities. The speed and certainty of nuclear retaliation is just as important. These two characteristics simply aren’t present with conventional weapons. Leaders can delude themselves into thinking their conventional forces, however improbably, will end up victorious in battle. In any case, the consequences of being wrong are far in the future. For instance, Imperial Japanese leaders knew it was a tremendous gamble to take on the United States. Isoroku Yamamoto, the Japanese admiral who planned Pearl Harbor, warned his civilian leadership beforehand: “In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.” After the American economic embargo, however, Japanese leaders were only faced with bad options: capitulating in the face of American pressure or fighting a more powerful enemy in a likely futile effort. In these circumstances, Tokyo decided to gamble. After all, it was conceivable that America would be so exhausted from fighting Nazi Germany in Europe that it would ultimately sue for peace in Asia, especially in the face of fierce Japanese resistance. While the outcome of conventional wars hinges on a number of unknowable factors, nuclear retaliation is certain. And, unlike with conventional weapons—especially before airplanes and missiles—one doesn’t have to defeat the other side’s military to wreak havoc on its cities. Nuclear weapons can do so immediately. Moreover,as Robert Jervis points out , when two countries with secure, thermonuclear arsenals go to war, “the side that is ‘losing’ the war as judged by various measures of military capability can inflict as much destruction on the side that is ‘winning’ as the ‘winner’ can on the ‘loser.’” This changes the calculation of leaders, and makes it inconceivable that rational leaders would opt for total war. This is not foolproof of course— there is still the possibility that miscalculations, gradual escalation, or the “threats that leave something to chance” will produce an outcome neither side wanted— but it is a strong incentive for peace.Existing deterrence checks Chinese miscalculationsGertz 18 (Bill Gertz is a journalist and author who has spent decades covering defense and national security affairs. He is the author of six national security books ,The National Interest, March 5, 2018, “Is America Preparing for a Nuclear War with China?” , accessed 8/21/18) **NCC Packet 2020Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin unveiled several new nuclear weapons last week in a replay of the Cold War. China, meanwhile, is continuing a similar buildup of high-technology strategic nuclear forces that remains largely hidden from view. Chinese secrecy about its nuclear forces and their use was a major theme of the Pentagon’s recently completed Nuclear Posture Review that outlined a new “tailored deterrence” policy for China. The new plan is aimed at persuading Chinese leaders to avoid military miscalculations – like provocative actions in the South China Sea, or hostile activities related to Taiwan or Japan – that could quickly escalate into a nuclear exchange. The unclassified posture review shed little light on the details of the buildup of China’s nuclear forces other than identifying what were called “entirely new nuclear capabilities.” They include several new types of missiles, including hypersonic weapons, satellite-killing missiles and regional intermediate-range nuclear forces. The review takes note of the main threat of a nuclear war between the United States and China: A military encounter that escalates into a regional conflict culminating in a nuclear exchange involving China’s regional nuclear-armed missiles. “Our tailored strategy for China is designed to prevent Beijing from mistakenly concluding that it could secure an advantage through the limited use of its theater nuclear capabilities, or that any use of nuclear weapons, however limited, is acceptable,” the review states. The Pentagon did not specify how tailored deterrence would work. It warned that the United States “will maintain the capability to credibly threaten intolerable damage as Chinese leaders calculate costs and benefits, such that the costs incurred as a result of Chinese nuclear employment, at any level of escalation, would vastly outweigh any benefit.” Strategic military planning for China, however, would likely seek to put at risk what Chinese leaders hold most dearly: Continued rule by the Communist Party of China. Thus, U.S. tailored deterrence would involve signaling to the Chinese leadership that any future conflict would result in the destruction of the Chinese Communist Party, and its military arm, the People’s Liberation Army. Robust security for Chinese leaders Chinese leadership statements and military writings make clear China probably understands that strategy, and the military has invested heavily in defending Party leaders.Senkakus: Impact DefenseNo War---No Motive---1NCNo escalation – both sides hate conflict Kolar 18 [Stefan Kolar researches East Asian Regional Studies and international relations at the Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, “Sino-Japanese Relations and the Potential for Militarised Conflict in the Twenty-First Century”, December, ] IanM **NCC Packet 2020***Note: MID – Militarized Interstate DisputesFindings and Conclusion Even though the Japanese government holds the official position that there is no territorial dispute over the ownership of the Senkaku/Diàoyú Islands, ample evidence suggests that a territorial dispute is in place, as the PRC is obviously not accepting and is actively challenging Japanese control over the islands. The initial dispute onset came after the PRC raised its claim in December 1971, after the discovery of natural gas and oil deposits. The dispute is driven by strong economic and strategic motives and mainly based on conflicting interpretations of legal proceedings and the imprecise wording of treaties dating back to the nineteenth century, and thus fulfils the first Step to War. Both nations have one politically relevant alliance at this point in time, Japan allied to the US, whereas the PRC is allied to the DPRK. Beyond that, analysis has shown a trend of Japanese attempts to establish closer defence ties with most of its southern regional neighbours, especially with Australia. The main goal is SLOC security and a general containment of China’s assertiveness. Nonetheless, all relationships are below-relevant alliance types, being mostly security partnerships focused on anti-piracy and operations and arms deals. There has also been a detectable shift of China towards military cooperation with Russia, but no official alliance has been established. Even though both countries alliances were formed decades before the onset of the current territorial dispute, the requirements for the second Step to War are fulfilled. The analysis of the 25-year period from the end of the Cold War to 2016 has shown that there is an enduring Sino-Japanese rivalry, and therefore a third Step to War. Table 2 shows that there have been 16 MIDs between 1991 and 2016, surmounting the necessary duration of 20 years and the required six MIDs to classify the relationship as enduring rivalry. It is noteworthy that, while the number of MIDs is high, nearly all of them are restricted to displays of force, mostly provocative naval manoeuvres and intrusions. Threats of force are very rare and so is any actual use of force—mainly seizures of civilian protestors. While the intensity of the MIDs seems to increase, especially with the growing number of military vessels employed on both sides, the clashes nonetheless appear ritualised to a certain degree. Provocations are met with assertiveness and a short MID before diplomatic efforts calms the situation until the next MID a few years later—a repeated but usually restrained cycle of military posturing and sabre-rattling. To establish whether there is a Sino-Japanese arms race or a mutual military build-up, the respective drivers for strategic development were analysed, showing that both nations are still adapting to the post-Cold War environment and the twenty-first century. For short time threats, the DPRK presents the biggest concern to Japan, while the PRC with its growing assertiveness, persisting territorial disputes, and power projection is more of a long-term threat as a regional rival and potential danger to Japanese SLOC. For China, the perceived threat of the US stayed the main influence throughout the 1990s and up to the present. The main drivers are deterring American power projection and a contingency for Taiwanese independence. While both sides are becoming more aware of their antagonism, neither Japan nor China fully commits to officially identifying the other as a strategic opponent, although Japan has become more vocal in light of China’s continuing assertiveness. Even so, Japan prefers to veil its strategic planning with topics such as threats from North Korean missiles. Regarding military expenditure, China’s spending has markedly increased during the last decade, while Japan’s defence budget has remained virtually unchanged. Nonetheless, the allocated GDP percentages have remained stable, and China’s increased expenditure is therefore not worrisome but somewhat expected due to its economic rise. Furthermore, China is also lacking the characteristic acceleration in military spending seen during arms races. Lastly, in quality and quantity, both nations have seen drops in numbers mainly as a reaction to the changed security environment after the Cold War. With the quantitative reductions, quality is boosted wherever possible, mainly for stealth aircraft and navies. China’s overall modernisation is mostly aimed at countering the US rather than Japan. In comparison, Japan’s recent modernisation is more clearly aimed on deterring China, although the modernisation largely appears to be mostly part of a continuous renewal of equipment to keep up with the newest technologies, rather than to surpass the PLA. In conclusion, most of the arms race criteria are either inconclusive or not fulfilled with only Japan mentioning the PRC as a strategic concern and Chinese modernisation being aimed at deterring the US, with expenditure remaining normal. Based on this analysis, it is clear that there is currently no arms race between Japan and China, thus leaving the fourth Step to War unfulfilled. Xí Jìnpíng and Abe Shinzō share a number of personal characteristics, beliefs, and political positions. Both men are seen as strong political leaders and reformers with a vision to strengthen their counties and to place them on top of the regional and international hierarchy. Since their respective assumption of power, China and Japan have further increased their military modernisation. The PRC has increased its power projection and assertiveness, while Japan has begun to reinterpret its constitution, in a first step to become a ‘normal’ military power. Furthermore, both leaders have an image of being ‘tough’ diplomats, willing to risk negotiations to gain concessions. On the other hand, they have also been accommodating towards each other in efforts to alleviate tensions and to avoid too intense conflicts. Overall, Xí and Abe do neither fit into the hardliner nor the accommodationist categories. Both exhibit nationalistic tendencies and beliefs, and are uncompromising on territorial issues, while also being moderate in case of other diplomatic issues. As the framework leaves no third option to categorise the leaders, the last Step to War remains inconclusive. Regarding a shift in military strategic positions, it has been shown that, at most focal points, there have been only partial changes with some developments being continuations of the geopolitical shift following the Cold War. Compared to the 1990s, the overall situation of the Senkaku/Diàoyú Islands has not changed in the twenty-first century, but even so, Chinese assertiveness is steadily on the rise. The severity of confrontations around the disputed islands and throughout the East China Sea has certainly increased and gained a more militarised character, as exemplified by the growing number of PLAN and JMSDF vessels involved, unspoken threats through aiming on ships and planes, as well as near clashes during flybys and the establishment of the Chinese ADIZ, which is the most severe out of the smaller alterations of the strategic environment. The alliances of both countries have not changed for decades, but there has been a noticeable tendency of Japan to court potential future alliance partners, especially Australia and China’s opponents in the SCSD. Likewise, the PRC has become more open to military cooperation with Russia. In terms of threat perception, expenditure, and military hardware, there have been several important changes. While adapting their military strategy to the new security situation of the twenty-first century, official perception of each other has also shifted, as Japan has identified China’s growing assertiveness and military build-up as worrying and vowed close surveillance. Expenditure did increase in both countries, though only marginally in Japan, but remained at constant GDP percentages. Militaries in both nations were modernised, with emphasis on joint operations and high tech; especially the PLA has rapidly reduced quantity in favour of quality, and put a lot of effort into the PLAN, which is China’s tool for military power projection in the twenty-first century. Likewise, Japan has sought to constantly upgrade its hardware in order to deter Chinese advances and assertiveness. Several drivers influencing the Sino-Japanese relationship and high-tension military situation have been identified. Most obviously, the economic advantages of controlling the Senkaku/Diàoyú Islands and their potential impact on the disputed EEZ delimitation in the East China Sea is a prime factor for the deterioration of bilateral relations. The strategic value of the islands is also closely tied to economic considerations while their social value is at most that of a political tool to strengthen nationalism. The enduring rivalry between both nations is, of course, another important driver, especially as the MIDs involve stronger military presences. The rivalry drives Japan’s military position and development to a stronger degree than China’s, as the PRC is driven more by Taiwan and US antagonism and containment policy. Furthermore, the ongoing SCSD has had a stronger impact on military development than the less-volatile East China Sea Dispute with Japan. For Japan, Chinese military modernisation appears as one of the biggest drivers behind its own military modernisation efforts, shifts in deployment, and new patrol areas. The threat from North Korean missiles is still a persistent influence, although it was theorised that the danger has been overstated to mask attempts to compensate for Chinese modernisation. Furthermore, Japan’s military development is also driven by US wishes for more interoperability and closer cooperation with the JSDF. Through the Simple Risk Barometer, it was determined that, with the three out of five steps that have been found to be in place, there is a notable risk of escalation between China and Japan; however, the fourth step, i.e. arms race, is not currently in place nor is the inconclusive last step of hardliners and accommodationists in power. Obviously, the onset of an arms race would be a major step towards war, and therefore one of the biggest risks. Even more so, at this point it appears that neither head of state is turning more towards their hardliner side and, thus, alienating and further antagonising their rival, whereas the formation of new relevant security alliances in the region are not the biggest threats to stability. Even a clear attempt to form a new, politically relevant alliance can put a major strain on rivalries as they spur the other nations defensive stance, increase the likelihood of the formation of new counteralliances, and create a more constricted, volatile regional environment. However, it is also important to note that there is also a certain degree of ritualisation in the relationship between the two countries, especially surrounding the territorial dispute and MIDs, which have remained mostly non-violent even amidst rising intensity. The current MID exhibits some of the most militarised actions during the last 25 years, and is indicative of the increased intensity, as even a small spark or accident during the growing displays of force might suffice to break through the ritualised sabre-rattling, turning the East China Sea into a much more volatile environment. At this current path it seems as if both nations are moving towards a point-of-no-return rather than a peaceful solution for their ongoing antagonism.No War---No Motive---2NCNo one’s going to war over rocks---this can also be defense against some deterrence DA that says Chinese invasion gives them strategic assets and energy hegHall 19 [Todd H. Hall?is an associate professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations and tutor in politics at St Anne’s College. His research interests extend to the areas of international relations theory;?the intersection of emotion, affect, and foreign policy; and?Chinese foreign policy, “WHY THE SENKAKU/DIAOYU ISLANDS ARE LIKE A TOOTHPASTE TUBE”, 9-4, ] IanM **NCC Packet 2020Seven years later, things have calmed down slightly. The situation in the waters around the islands, however, remains far more charged than it was before everything started in 2010. Official Chinese maritime vessels have been conducting regular incursions into the islands’ territorial waters, and official aircraft have repeatedly appeared overhead. In 2013, Beijing announced an Air Defense Identification Zone including the airspace over the islands, raising the risk of aerial confrontation. It also took two years before the leaders of both countries would even agree to meet again. And this only after both sides had hammered out statements seemingly agreeing to disagree about the existence of a disagreement. There has been some progress since Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in 2014. Apart from a general improvement in the tone of relations, both sides have established a maritime communication mechanism between the Japanese Self Defense Forces and the People’s Liberation Army. Even still, the space around the islands has become more crowded and the possibility for serious conflict remains. The Conventional Wisdom Sure, one could argue that sooner or later tensions were bound to emerge simply because the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are so valuable. A pervasive line is that the disputed islands “are close to important shipping lanes, offer rich fishing grounds and lie near potential oil and gas reserves. They are also in a strategically significant position.” This refrain is particularly echoed by hawks in China, Japan, and even the United States. Looking into this conventional wisdom, however, I have found it to be dubious at best. Strategically speaking, the islands are small and isolated. Viewed from the Chinese mainland, the first island chain is what really matters, and it is located a good distance beyond the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Yes, one could conceivably use the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands as a platform on which to put radar or missiles. But the islands offer scant cover. Such assets would be highly exposed and easily targeted. Granted, China does appear to have an appetite for small, vulnerable installations in the South China Sea. But to date, China has only militarized those features in the South China Sea already under its control. The regional disputants it faces in the South China Sea are also much less formidable than Japan. Trying to militarize the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands means taking them first, thereby hazarding armed conflict not only with Japan but also the United States. Such a move would entail substantial risk for marginal advantage. Besides, China has easier ways to place fixed assets in the East China Sea. In terms of their economic value, the islands are uninhabited (except for a few goats), the fishing stocks are in decline, and potential petroleum and natural gas reserves remain unconfirmed and are now estimated to be much, much smaller than originally thought. Underwater topography also means that Japan would have a hard — if not impossible — time exploiting any natural gas resources on its own. Moreover, it remains uncertain what — if any — advantage sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands would provide in negotiations or judicial proceedings to divide up who gets what in the East China Sea, should these ever even occur. Viewed either strategically or economically, the islands may not be totally worthless. Few things ever are. But their potential strategic or economic value hardly appears to merit the dangers of armed conflict or war.China and Japan won’t escalate – no incentive to attack and relations have stabilized Pollack 19 [Jonathan D. Pollack is a nonresident senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center and Center for East Asia Policy at the Brookings Institution, “THE STRESS TEST: JAPAN IN AN ERA OF GREAT POWER COMPETITION”, October, ] IanM **NCC Packet 2020JONATHAN POLLACK: On the East China Sea, I would very much agree with Richard that there is a new normal there. I don’t see under prevailing circumstances, any incentives that Xi Jinping, for one, has any particular interest in making this situation go from bad to worse. Quite the contrary. There has been a quasi-normalization in the relationship between Abe and Xi. Abe made his first state visit to China last fall, and they have reasons for keeping things on a somewhat even keel here. At the end of the day, both of them have a common problem, and that is a profoundly unpredictable president of the United States.A2: China Attacks (Military)---2NCChina will never physically attack the Senkaku’s – they know there’s no rush Bosack 19 [Michael MacArthur Bosack is the special adviser for government relations at the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies. He was the deputy chief of government relations at Headquarters, U.S. Forces Japan, and is a former officer in the U.S. Air Force, “China's Senkaku Islands ambition”, 6-12, ] IanM **NCC Packet 2020Some observers are concerned that China will eventually take military action to seize the Senkakus, worrying that countries will be dragged into a great power war over uninhabited rocks in the middle of the ocean, but this ignores a few key things. First, for China, there is no rush. Its energy situation is not so dire that it urgently needs to tap into whatever resources may exist in the vicinity of the islands. It also does not immediately need the fishing rights—besides, the China Coast Guard’s response to illegal fishing in the area actually contributes to its argument that it co-administers the waters around the Senkakus. Second, China is a gray zone revisionist power. For China, the measure of success is how much it can change the status quo without eliciting a strong, consolidated international response. The way it does that is by operating just beneath the level of illegality and exploiting gaps in the rules-based international order. After all, if it is not in direct violation of international legal provisions, there will always be a seam in any multinational effort to counter China’s behavior. For China to succeed in this plan, all it takes is for government officials from the international community to say, “What’s the big deal? Let the China Coast Guard take care of Chinese vessels.” Once the presence of Chinese assets becomes so commonplace that policymakers fail to notice or care, it will have achieved its interim step of de facto co-administration. After that, China can initiate the next step of its plan: angling for sole administration. This means that China will start pushing the boundaries on what it does in the waters and airspace around the Senkakus. Perhaps China plants an oil rig in Japanese-administered waters. Or perhaps the Chinese coast guard starts harassing Taiwanese and Japanese fishing vessels that are legally operating in the area.A2: Escalation---2NCOnly confrontation is between coast guards – empirically doesn’t go nuclear Sato 19 [Koichi Sato is a Professor of Asian Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, J. F. Oberlin University. He received his Ph. D. in International Studies from Waseda University, “The Senkaku Islands Dispute: Four Reasons of the Chinese Offensive - A Japanese View”, Journal of Contemporary East Asia Studies,?50 82, DOI:?10.1080/24761028.2019.1626567] IanM **NCC Packet 2020Regarding the actual maritime conflict, we cannot find the serious illustration in relevant to high-intensity conflict between China and the Japan–US Alliance. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) navy has provoked the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) several times in the East China Sea (Nihon Keizai Shimbun, February 5 2013).4 They are relevant to the middle-intensity conflict. Still, the PLA never did challenge the Japan–US Alliance seriously, because it means all-out war including nuclear forces. If so, the most serious issue for Japan is the maritime confrontation between the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) patrol vessels and the China Coast Guard (CCG)5 patrol vessels & Chinese fishing boats in the sea area surrounding the Senkaku Islands (尖閣諸島; Diaoyu Islands [釣魚島] in Chinese).6 It is a kind of low-intensity conflict. It has continued since the Japanese nationalization of the Islands in September 2012 (Yomiuri Shimbun, September 11 2012). The Chinese government has been claiming the sovereignty of the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea against Japan since December 30 1971.7 Why China (PRC) has a deep attachment to the Senkaku Islands, and what is the true state of affairs in the Senkaku dispute between Japan and China?A2: Japanese Nationalism---2NCNo impact to nationalism---Japan doesn’t want war, and it gets redirected to economy Kirk 19 [Donald Kirk has been a columnist for the Korea Times and South China Morning Post, among other newspapers and magazines. He wrote this for?, “Japan’s embrace of?nationalism”, 12-13, ] IanM **NCC Packet 2020Japanese conservatism is like a seething volcano, spewing smoke and ash but not quite ready to erupt. The reluctance reflects the great ambivalence in Japanese society. Japanese are fundamentally conservative, united in a culture dedicated to hard work and formal relationships but otherwise undecided about where they are going politically and militarily as a regional or even world power. It’s a tribute to the conservative nature of Japanese society that Shinzo Abe now rules as Japan’s longest-serving prime minister. The phenomenon of stability nurtured by a deep desire to stick to the policies that have powered Japan’s renaissance as a world power after the disaster of the Pacific War help to explain why Abe has maintained his grip. Abe brings a new kind of nationalism to the Japanese scene. He definitely stands for the traditional powers that guided Japanese leaders from the time of the Meiji restoration in the 1860s through the imperial takeover of other Asian countries, but he avoids the strident right-wing extremism that led Japan to wage war against some of the world’s strongest countries. Japan does have a clique of right-wingers, as seen in the Japan First Party, but Abe is not quite one of them. Abe does appeal, however, to nationalist instincts. He has seized upon the deep-seated, almost instinctual popular belief that Japanese forces fought well in the Pacific War and would have prevailed had the Americans not inflicted the terrible tragedies of the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If there were a slogan for Abe’s form of nationalism, it might be “Make Japan Great Again.” He has accomplished success by his skillful politicking between reformist and conventional elements in the ranks of the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which has been in power, except for brief periods of socialist rule, since 1945. In a real sense, Abe owes his conservative philosophy to his grandfather, Nobuske Kishi, who had been imprisoned by the Americans as a Class A war criminal for his cruel rule over Manchuria, the artificial state of Manchukuo during the war. So well did Kishi get along with the American conquerors that they got him out of prison and into political life at the highest level. Kishi directed his nationalism to making Japan one of the world’s largest, most vibrant economies, as did his younger brother, Eisaku Sato, who became prime minister several years after Kishi stepped down. Abe’s father, Shintaro Abe, sometimes considered for prime minister, had as foreign minister focused on economic ties, negotiating sometimes bitter trade disputes as Japan built strong balances with almost all countries, especially the United States. Abe’s international reputation as a rightist figure stems not only from his success at economic reform but also from his intense desire to get rid of Article 9 of the post-war “peace constitution,” written and imposed on Japan by Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s inner circle. The curse of Article 9, for Abe, is that it prohibits Japan’s armed forces from going overseas, much less fighting a foreign war. The words, “The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation” and “land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained,” are embedded into the psyches of all Japanese from childhood. Japan has long since abandoned adherence to Article 9 in the strictest sense. Japanese Self-Defense forces — air, ground and naval, comprising nearly 250,000 troops — now make up one of the world’s strongest, best equipped military establishments. Abe, however, would like to go further, if not by rescinding Article 9 then by reinterpreting it so Japanese forces can go beyond their home territory in the interests of defense. He is frustrated in achieving this goal, however, by the simple fact that a significant majority of Japanese do not want to revise Article 9 at all. Japanese do not believe a war will break out in the near future, whereas Abe stresses the need for security as long as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un orders tests of missiles that might carry nuclear warheads aimed at Japan.No impact to Japanese nationalismZack Beauchamp 14, Editor of TP Ideas and a reporter for and M.Sc in International Relations, "Why Everyone Needs To Stop Freaking Out About War With China," 2-7-14, ThinkProgress, , DOA: 9-7-2015, y2k **NCC Packet 2020But there are a number of reasons to think that the resurgent Japanese nationalism Abe represents isn’t going to force war during a crisis. For one thing, his government’s coalition partners would do their damndest to block escalation. New Komeito, whose support keeps Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in power, is an odd duck: pacifict Buddhist libertarians is way oversimplified, but it gets the point across. Regardless, they are extremely serious about their pacifism — it’s at the core of their political identity, and it inclines them towards a more generous stance towards Beijing. They’d exert a calming pressure in any crisis. Now, there are rumblings that the LDP and New Komeito may part political ways. But the cause of the split — a disagreement over rewriting or reinterpreting Article 9, the pacifist article in Japan’s constitution — reveals the broadest check on Japanese nationalism. Simply put, the Japanese people still retain much of the nation’s post-World War II pacifist core, and Abe’s government has governed accordingly. Mike Mochizuki, the Japan-U.S. Relations Chair at George Washington University, took a hard look at Japanese opinion about militarization in the Abe era. He and his coauthor, Samuel Porter, found enormous Japanese opposition to anything resembling a significant return to active military status. For instance, 56 percent of Japanese voters supported seeing the treaty as prohibiting “collective self-defense” (meaning defense of its allies when attacked). A miniscule 7 percent wanted to see Japanese troops “fighting on the frontlines with the U.S. military.” So why did they support Abe’s aggressive LDP? In a word, the economy. Japan’s citizens aren’t deeply aligned with the LDP philosophy — “83 percent,” according to Mochizuki and Porter, “felt that a party that can effectively oppose the LDP is necessary” in government. Rather, they threw out the previous government because the economy was in tatters. Sixty percent of Japanese voters want Abe to focus on the economy, while only 9 percent see foreign policy as the priority. Abe’s government, nationalist stunts aside, isn’t unaware of this reality. Because China is Japan’s number one trading partner, “reviving Japan’s economy will be inordinately difficult if fractious political relations with China are allowed to damage Japan–China economic relations,” Mochizuki and Porter argue. “If Sino–Japanese relations were to deteriorate further and lead to a more precipitous drop in Japanese exports to China, this would jeopardize Abe’s growth strategy and thereby threaten his political survival.” As a consequence, they conclude, the Prime Minister’s approach to the Senkaku dispute “will be measured and will not entail full-blown militarization,” let alone short term escalation. Abe and the LDP rank militaristic nationalism a distant second to the nation’s economic health.A2: US Draw-In---2NCNo US draw in---technicalities let the US avoid involvement Kim 16 [Tongfi Kim is Programme Director International Affairs / Assistant Professor at Vesalius College, “Report Part Title: Sino-Japanese disputes and the US-Japan Alliance”, Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (2016), ] IanM **NCC Packet 2020Finally, it is conceivable that Japan requests the activation of the US-Japan alliance against China in maritime disputes unrelated to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. For instance, a Congressional Research Service Report makes the following point: “It is unclear to what extent and in which situations the US-Japan Mutual Security treaty, which refers to an armed attack on the territories under the administration of Japan, would apply in the event of a Sino-Japanese military conflict over the two countries’ maritime boundary dispute. Regardless of the treaty’s technicalities and its interpretation, however, it is likely that Japanese policymakers and citizens would expect that the treaty would apply to any Sino-Japanese military conflict, including those involving the competing maritime claims.” (Manyin 2013: 7) In my view, however, as long as the military conflict is limited in scale, technicalities of the treaty should help the United States to avoid involvement without too much damage to its credibility.US won’t escalate---it will do everything it can to avoid it Kim 16 [Tongfi Kim is Programme Director International Affairs / Assistant Professor at Vesalius College, “Report Part Title: Sino-Japanese disputes and the US-Japan Alliance”, Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (2016), ] IanM **NCC Packet 2020Finally, despite the repeated public reassurance from the US government, it is important to acknowledge that the United States has also sought to restrain Japan to avoid the risk of escalation in Sino-Japanese disputes. From publicly available information, the Obama administration seems to have been more cautious about provoking China in its early years, especially before tension rose in September 2010.27 In August 2010, for example, Kyodo News (2010) reported that the Obama administration had decided not to state explicitly that the US-Japan security treaty applies to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in order to avoid irritating China.28 Even after the Obama administration increased its public support to Japan in response to the rising tension in the East and South China Seas and perceived assertiveness of China, it still continued a cautious approach. For instance, a declassified email forwarded to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reveals that the US government urged Japan to “consult and advise Beijing on their plans” before Japan nationalized three of the Senkaku Islands in September 2012 (Kyodo 2016b). Before the US Congress included the wording “unilateral action of a third party” (meaning China) in the draft for the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, the US government took a position to “oppose any unilateral action to change the status quo,” not distinguishing China and Japan (Oshima 2014). Although President Obama reconfirmed the applicability of the alliance to the Senkaku/Diaoyu disputes in his remark in April 2014 discussed earlier, it should also be noted that the following passage was accompanying the commitment: “In our discussions, I emphasized with Prime Minister Abe the importance of resolving this issue peacefully – not escalating the situation, keeping the rhetoric low, not taking provocative actions, and trying to determine how both Japan and China can work cooperatively together. And I want to make that larger point. We have strong relations with China. They are a critical country not just to the region, but to the world.” (White House 2014a) In the questions and answers following the remark, President Obama further stated that he has “said directly to the Prime Minister [Abe] that it would be a profound mistake to continue to see escalation around this issue rather than dialogue and confidence-building measures between Japan and China” (White House 2014a).29 Let us now turn to the position of Japan.No US draw-in to Senkaku conflictDr. Xue Li 15 is Director of the Department of International Strategy at the Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Xu Yanzhuo received her doctorate from Durham University (UK) in December 2014 and studies international responsibility, South China Sea disputes, and Chinese foreign policy. "The US and China Won't See Military Conflict Over the South China Sea," 6-19-2015, Diplomat, , DOA: 9-7-2015, y2k **NCC Packet 2020In a recent piece on the South China Sea disputes, I argued that “the ASEAN claimants are largely staying behind the scenes while external powers take center stage.” Based on recent developments on the South China Sea issue, it seems the U.S. will not only be a ‘director’ but an actor. We saw this clearly on May 20, when the U.S. military sent surveillance aircraft over three islands controlled by Beijing. However, this does not necessary mean the South China Sea will spark a U.S.-China military conflict. As a global hegemon, the United States’ main interest lies in maintaining the current international order as well as peace and stability. Regarding the South China Sea, U.S. interests include ensuring peace and stability, freedom of commercial navigation, and military activities in exclusive economic zones. Maintaining the current balance of power is considered to be a key condition for securing these interests—and a rising China determined to strengthen its hold on South China Sea territory is viewed as a threat to the current balance of power. In response, the U.S. launched its “rebalance to Asia” strategy. In practice, the U.S. has on the one hand strengthened its military presence in Asia-Pacific, while on the other hand supporting ASEAN countries, particularly ASEAN claimants to South China Sea territories. This position has included high-profile rhetoric by U.S. officials. In 2010, then-U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton spoke at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi about the South China Sea, remarks that aligned the U.S. with Southeast Asia’s approach to the disputes. At the 2012 Shangri-La Dialogue, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta explained how the United States will rebalance its force posture as part of playing a “deeper and more enduring partnership role” in the Asia-Pacific region. In 2014, then-Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel called out China’s “destabilizing, unilateral activities asserting its claims in the South China Sea.” His remarks also came at the Shangri-La dialogue, while China’s HY-981 oil rig was deployed in the waters around the Paracel Islands. In 2015, U.S. officials have openly pressured China to scale back its construction work in the Spratly islands and have sent aircraft to patrol over islands in the Spratly that are controlled by China. These measures have brought global attention to the South China Sea. However, if we look at the practical significance of the remarks, there are several limiting factors. The interests at stake in the South China Sea are not core national interests for the United States. Meanwhile, the U.S.-Philippine alliance is not as important as the U.S.-Japan alliance, and U.S. ties with other ASEAN countries are even weaker. Given U.S.-China mutual economic dependence and China’s comprehensive national strength, the United States is unlikely to go so far as having a military confrontation with China over the South China Sea. Barack Obama, the ‘peace president’ who withdrew the U.S. military from Iraq and Afghanistan, is even less likely to fight with China for the South China Sea. As for the U.S. interests in the region, Washington is surely aware that China has not affected the freedom of commercial navigation in these waters so far. And as I noted in my earlier piece, Beijing is developing its stance and could eventually recognize the legality of military activities in another country’s EEZ (see, for example, the China-Russia joint military exercise in the Mediterranean). Yet when it comes to China’s large-scale land reclamation in the Spratly Islands (and on Woody Island in the Paracel Islands), Washington worries that Beijing will conduct a series of activities to strengthen its claims on the South China Sea, such as establishing an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) or advocating that others respect a 200-nautical mile (370 km) EEZ from its islands. Meanwhile, the 2014 oil rig incident taught Washington that ASEAN claimants and even ASEAN as a whole could hardly play any effective role in dealing with China’s land reclamation. Hence, the U.S. has no better choice than to become directly involved in this issue. At the beginning, the United States tried to stop China through private diplomatic mediation, yet it soon realized that this approach was not effective in persuading China. So Washington started to tackle the issue in a more aggressive way, such as encouraging India, Japan, ASEAN, the G7, and the European Union to pressure Beijing internationally. Domestically, U.S. officials from different departments and different levels have opposed China’s ‘changing the status quo’ in this area. Since 2015, Washington has increased its pressure on China. It sent the USS Fort Worth, a littoral combat ship, to sail in waters near the Spratly area controlled by Vietnam in early May. U.S. official are also considering sending naval and air patrols within 12 nautical miles of the Spratly Islands controlled by China. Washington has recognized that it could hardly stop China’s construction in Spratly Islands. Therefore, it has opted to portray Beijing as a challenger to the status quo, at the same time moving to prevent China from establishing a South China Sea ADIZ and an EEZ of 200 nautical miles around its artificial islands. This was the logic behind the U.S. sending a P-8A surveillance plane with reporters on board to approach three artificial island built by China. China issued eight warnings to the plane; the U.S. responded by saying the plane was flying through international airspace. Afterwards, U.S. Defense Department spokesman, Army Col. Steve Warren, said there could be a potential “freedom of navigation” exercise within 12 nautical miles of the artificial islands. If this approach were adopted, it would back China into a corner; hence it’s a unlikely the Obama administration will make that move. As the U.S. involvement in the South China Sea becomes more aggressive and high-profile, the dynamic relationship between China and the United States comes to affect other layers of the dispute (for example, relations between China and ASEAN claimants or China and ASEAN in general). To some extent, the South China Sea dispute has developed into a balance of power tug-of-war between the U.S. and China, yet both sides will not take the risk of military confrontation. As Foreign Minister Wang Yi put it in a recent meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, “as for the differences, our attitude is it is okay to have differences as long as we could avoid misunderstanding, and even more importantly, avoid miscalculation.”Senkakus: Solvency Article 5 Good---1NCArticle 5 threat stabilizes deterrence – anything less causes Chinese hegemony Hass et al 19 [Ryan Hass is a fellow and the Michael H. Armacost Chair in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, where he holds a joint appointment to the John L. Thornton China Center and the Center for East Asia Policy Studies, and Adam P. Liff is a nonresident senior fellow with the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at Brookings, and Bruce Jones is vice president and director of the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution and a senior fellow in its Project on International Order and Strategy, “THE STRESS TEST: JAPAN IN AN ERA OF GREAT POWER COMPETITION”, October, ] IanM **NCC Packet 2020RYAN HASS: President Obama was the first president in American history to declare2 that the Senkakus fall under Article V of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty,3 so I would quibble a little bit with that observation. ADAM LIFF: That’s an important point. I think it’s also worth noting that President Obama’s statement largely reflected longstanding U.S. policy on the matter. As Lindsey noted, there were several very important developments in the Obama years that bolstered deterrence — such as the Guidelines update and the creation of the Alliance Coordination Mechanism. But it also seems fair to note that it took the Obama administration quite a while to get to the point of making a presidential-level statement about Article V’s applicability to the Senkakus. More than a year-and-a-half passed between China’s decision to significantly ratchet up operational pressure in the islands’ contiguous zone and territorial seas (September 2012) and when President Obama made his April 2014 statement. And it was in that earlier, more volatile period that commentators in all three countries (and beyond) expressed serious concerns about escalation to a conflict. A lot happened before Obama made his statement, including a change of the de facto operational status quo in the waters around the islands, and the period before Obama’s statement at least temporarily seemed to raise questions from serious people about U.S. commitments — especially in Tokyo and Beijing. All that might have happened anyway, to be sure, but given the apparent stabilizing effect of the April 2014 statement after it was made, one wonders what might have happened if it had been made earlier. BRUCE JONES: It’s not a President Obama or President Trump issue. This will be portrayed as: what does it mean politically for any president of the United States to decide to go to war with China over uninhabited rocks? If I were the president’s political advisor, I would be aware that a lot of people would be asking questions about that. ADAM LIFF: When the crisis was at its peak — in terms of potential for escalation in late 2012 and 2013 — I remember a lot of folks were asking that same question. But as Richard may have been suggesting earlier, I think what China is doing in the East China Sea is about much more than some “uninhabited rocks” and, especially if Beijing succeeds — especially if it succeeds through coercion — the potential implications transcend these particular islands and touch on bigger picture issues of immense significance for both Japan and the United States. This should matter to the U.S. for a lot of reasons, I’d argue, but let me just note a couple: First, the leaders and public of Japan — the U.S.’s most important ally in what two successive administrations identify as the most important region for America’s future — widely see this dispute as a direct threat to Japan’s territory. Despite that, in my view, Japan has shown remarkable self-restraint. What are the second- and third- order consequences for the alliance and region if the U.S. appears ambivalent? Second, it’s a clear indicator of how China’s leaders are flexing China’s growing muscles when its neighbors’ interests are out of sync with their own. If Beijing achieves such a conspicuous change of the status quo unilaterally and with relative impunity — against Japan — the implications for China’s neighbors, many of whom are also U.S. security allies or partners, could be profound — to say nothing of the U.S.-Japan alliance itself. Finally, and perhaps a bit more abstractedly, China’s activities in the East and South China Seas are already having a corrosive effect on the legal and security order. Just look at the response of the region and world to the July 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling4 on China’s South China Sea claims. So, I don’t exactly agree that the competition unfolding in the East China Sea is just “over uninhabited rocks.” I think it’s much bigger than that.Article 5 Good---2NCAff crushes deterrence and gives china and NoKo the advantageSchoff and Bin 17 [Schoff is a senior fellow in the Carnegie Asia Program. His research focuses on U.S.-Japan relations and regional engagement, Japanese technology innovation, and regional trade and security dynamics, Li was a senior fellow working jointly in the Nuclear Policy Program and Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace., "A Precarious Triangle: U.S.-China Strategic Stability and Japan," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 11-7-2017, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020In Tokyo’s opinion, the Asia-Pacific region suffers from an asymmetry of vulnerability. China and North Korea have acquired an invulnerable regional strike posture with road-mobile missiles, while Japan and South Korea lack any means to put them at risk. In China’s case, this is combined with an increasingly large, sophisticated, and expeditionary conventional military capability. Beijing has expressed no interest in leveraging such theater dominance for tactical advantage, but some Japanese experts have argued that this military strength—together with China’s economic influence—is an integral part of its coercion tactics in the region. Forward deployed U.S. forces and U.S. strategic strike capabilities counterbalance much of China’s (and, to a lesser extent, North Korea’s) regional advantage, but this would tip back in China’s favor if U.S. nuclear forces are deterred out of the equation.US posture on defending the Senkaku’s prevents Chinese adventurismSchoff and Bin 17 [Schoff is a senior fellow in the Carnegie Asia Program. His research focuses on U.S.-Japan relations and regional engagement, Japanese technology innovation, and regional trade and security dynamics, Li was a senior fellow working jointly in the Nuclear Policy Program and Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace., "A Precarious Triangle: U.S.-China Strategic Stability and Japan," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 11-7-2017, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020U.S. scholars tend to see Japan’s defense capability and the U.S.-Japan alliance as contributing to crisis stability because it discourages Chinese attempts to use military means to resolve territorial or sovereignty disputes in the East China Sea. They also believe that high-level U.S. reassurances that the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are covered by the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty help the situation, because it is clear that any attempt by China to seize the islands would be met with combined U.S. and Japanese military power. U.S. and Japanese scholars cautioned that China’s excessive maritime claims and aggressive enforcement actions—including the use of paramilitary forces and civilian fishing fleets—represented a form of escalation that endangers regional crisis stability by bringing the parties just one small step away from military conflict on a regular basis.Any weakness in the alliance means China takes advantage Day and Norton 19?[William Day has a masters in international affairs from UC Sandigo and a masters in defense and strategic studies form the US naval war college, David Norton is a program Support Assistant specializing in research for the US army, "Reinforcing Hub-and-Spoke: Addressing People's Republic of China Influence within U.S. Indo-Pacific Alliances," DTIC, 6/16/19, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020As evidenced by our case studies, we can see that China is responding to a deterioration in U.S. alliances. Despite security issues remaining unresolved, the PRC has chosen to adopt a strategy of cooption against U.S. allies when it detects a weakness in the bilateral alliance. We are not arguing, however, that this strategy of cooption will lead to an alliance breakaway in the near future. As with many geopolitical issues, this strategy utilized by China – and its implication for the United States – is nuanced and long-term. While these issues can be precipitated by leadership and policy shifts on both sides of the alliance, they are symptoms of broader, underlying structural issues. Strong debate exists as to what constitutes adequate burden sharing in these allied relationships. Certainly, countries such as Japan and South Korea are no longer the war-torn economies of 1950 and have developed capable militaries of their own. Furthermore, we must also examine whether bilateral agreements are still the most effective solution in a shifting geopolitical landscape of the Indo-Pacific.Aff lets China dominate East AsiaKatagiri 19 [Nori Katagiri?is Associate Professor of Political Science at Saint Louis University. He is also Visiting Research Fellow, Air Staff College, Japan Air Self-Defence Force and Fellow Cohort 4 of the Mansfield Foundation’s US-Japan Network for the Future. He received his PhD degree in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania., "Evolution of Sino-Japanese Relations: Implications for Northeast Asia and Beyond," E-International Relations, 4-10-2019, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020Overall, ongoing bilateral interactions show that in the short run, China and Japan are likely to continue economic engagement and military balancing. Over the long run, however, China is poised to have a power advantage over Japan. China is growing faster economically, demographically, and militarily, and retains an advantage in hard power as well as the power to significantly influence events at the United Nations as a permanent member of the Security Council with veto power. Japan has boasted of its soft power to make the country culturally attractive, is making a slow economic recovery of its own, and remains protected by American forces. This means, however, that if Trump were to withdraw the United States from active engagement in East Asia, not necessarily an unreasonable possibility, China would likely become the dominant player, especially in the military sphere.A2: Caps Escalation---1NCSino Japan war escalation is inevitable – even if the plan happensNavarro 16 [Peter Navarro?is a professor at the University of California-Irvine.? He is the author of?Crouching Tiger: What China’s Militarism Means for the World, “Senkaku Suicide Scenarios: China vs. Ameripan”, 3-31, ] IanM **NCC Packet 2020Counterattack Scenarios Professor Lyle Goldstein of the US Naval War College says the US should do absolutely nothing. Those are rocks. They're not important to anyone. They're not important to Japan. They're not important to China. They're certainly not important to the United States. If, however, the US stays on the sidelines, a war between Japan and China could quickly go nuclear. Japanese forces, outnumbered though it may be, are quite capable and may, in the early stages of any war, get the upper hand. At that point, national pride – and perhaps survival of the Chinese Communist Party -- would likely dictate China bombing Tokyo. As a second scenario, Colonel T.X. Hammes of National Defense University suggests using the same kind of thermobaric weapons Russia has used to great effect in both Chechnya and Syria. Explains Hammes in this exchange with the interviewer: HAMMES: A thermobaric weapon is a weapon that spreads a fuel air mixture, and it disseminates fuel air all the way over, and then it detonates. So it goes into the holes in the ground, you breathe it in, and then it detonates and by over pressure, it kills. The Russians used thermobarics in Chechnya – hand-held RPG type thermobarics. They're a devastating weapon. INTERVIEWER: So if we wipe out every Chinese soldier on the islands, what happens on the mainland in terms of their nationalism? HAMMES: Well, that's the problem. Nationalism will get going. There's, no accounting for stupidity, so you have to be prepared to fight Here’s still a third “embargo” response option offered up by Brookings Institution scholar Michael O’Hanlon: Japanese and US naval and air forces establish a perimeter and starve out the invaders. Would today’s China allow itself to be so intimidated? The more likely response is some form of escalatory behavior, e.g., a barrage of antiship ballistic missiles raining down on Japanese and US surface ship or ultra-quiet Russian-designed Chinese subs launching torpedoes and cruise missiles.Relations: Sino JapanDouble Bind---1NCEither the current relations solve – or its impossible due to fundamental issues Johnson 19 [Jesse Johnson is a staff writer for the Japanese Times , "Tenuous ties: Few signs of substance behind warming Sino-Japanese relations as communist China marks 70th anniversary," Japan Times, 9/30/19, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020**As Washington and Beijing increasingly clash over global primacy, Japan’s own ties with communist-ruled China are experiencing an upswing — at least on the surface — ahead of Tuesday’s 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese leader Xi Jinping said in late June that ties have returned to a “normal track,” as both talked up a “new era of Japan-China relations” at the Osaka Group of 20 summit during the Chinese leader’s first visit to Japan as leader. Furthermore, the two leaders agreed that Xi will visit Japan again next spring — this time as a state guest. The display has stood in stark contrast to the famously icy handshake in 2014 between the two Asian rivals, which highlighted how chilly relations between the world’s second- and third-largest economies had become. That handshake, however, turned out to become something of a turning point, as the two leaders continued to push for a thaw, meeting several times on the sidelines of multilateral summits. The speed of this thaw has only increased since U.S. President Donald Trump embarked on a hard-line campaign against China in 2017, with Beijing warming to Tokyo to free up some strategic breathing room and even seeking advice from Japan on how to deal with the U.S. trade war. But despite all of that, there are few signs of substance beyond the gushing language between Tokyo and Beijing. While ties between the two Asian powerhouses have warmed in recent years, the improvement is shaky — a marriage of political convenience. Behind the rhetoric about a “mutually beneficial” relationship lies a fundamentally incompatible reality, observers say. “The thaw we’re seeing now is a short-term measure pursued by both sides, who know all too well their strategic rivalry in the broader context but who do not mind reaping some practical benefits to meet certain immediate needs at home,” said Yinan He, a professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. But issues such as the territorial dispute over the Japan-controlled, China-claimed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which became a focal point of tension in the early 2010s, as well as Japan’s legacy of aggression in World War II, remain the elephants in the room. Contentious issues like these will remain potential triggers for a return to a more adversarial relationship, experts say, providing a wobbly foundation for any hopes of a longer-term improvement in ties. Rather, observers expect the rivals’ recent history to repeat itself — with the promises of a brighter future ultimately marred, as in the past, by an unshakable lack of trust.Double Bind---2NCEither squo relations solve, or good relations are structurally impossible Wijaya and Osaki 19 [Trissia Wijaya is a PhD Candidate at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University. Her research interests primarily lie in ASEAN-China-Japan relations, state-business relationship, and political economy in East Asia, Yuma Osaki is a PhD Candidate at the Graduate School of Law, Doshisha University. His research interests are in International Political Economy in the Asia-Pacific region, theoretical and empirical study of regional integration, international trade governance, and foreign policy in Japan and Australia., "Is This a True Thaw in Sino-Japanese Relations?," The Diplomat, 2/16/19, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020However, even though China and Japan hail a new level to their relationship, there remains a considerable gap between rhetoric and reality, as well as paradoxical effects of any significant moves within Sino-Japanese relations. Why is that the case? Love-Hate Relationships While private capital through trade and investment govern the trust between China and Japan, distrust reigns due to both the internal and external political structures. U.S. President Donald Trump weaponizing uncertainty in the U.S.-China trade war has undoubtedly pushed China and Japan closer together in terms of economic cooperation. Accompanied by a Japanese delegation of 500 people from a range of business sectors, Abe’s visit to China pledged new commitment to explore third-party markets for infrastructure projects jointly as well as to set up three-year currency swap agreement with China. Likewise, China is set to relax or lift an import ban on food from 10 Japanese areas including Tokyo. At the regional level, two countries have also pledged to speed up the negotiations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP). To what extent is the recent rapprochement sustainable, both politically and economically? At the macro level, one should not lose sight of the fact that there has always been a traditional pattern of Chinese diplomacy to turn to Japan (and Europe) when there is an issue in relations with the United States. This trend is compounded by the fact that China and Japan came to an impasse while reaching a consensus in defining the “new historical” starting point. During his visit to Beijing, Abe raised “three principles” that he expected to guide Sino-Japanese relations going forward: First, shifting from competition to collaboration; second, becoming partners instead of threats to each other; and third, developing a free and fair trade regime. Though acknowledging the contents, Beijing refrained from using the “three principles” term when touting a “new chapter” in the bilateral relationship. Chinese reluctance to fully acknowledge the third principle, in particular, simply indicates that Beijing yielded some of its political space to minimize tit-for-tat on the field of play with the United States. What is more, at the micro level as it has been at other times, the simplified politics using the “Japan card” that have been segued into interest group politics in China and vice versa, remain intact. For instance, prior to and after the Abe’s visit, instead of discussing the essence of the “new historical starting point” like prospective joint investments in infrastructure in third countries, the bottom line of public discussion on a vast scale tended more toward a series of flashbacks on Japan’s China ODA policy which somewhat exploited by particular interest groups. A recent Chinese-edition of the Global Times inflamed that it is rather China that had been generous by not insisting on war reparations and thus paved the way for Japanese companies and goods during the reform and opening period. In other words, while China acknowledged ODA’s contribution to its remarkable economic growth, Japan should be more thankful for having been a beneficiary of China’s development. Accordingly, when it comes to Japan, perception and approach toward China’s rising influence invariably come to mesh with double-layered forces, namely gaiatsu (foreign pressure) mainly from the United States and naiatsu (internal pressure) from domestic groups. On the one hand, the alleged characteristics of Japanese defensive nature on the U.S. gaiatsu might be a thorn amidst the diplomatic détente. Only one month after the state visit, following a decision by the the United States to prohibit government purchases of Huawei telecommunication products, Japan also revised its internal rules on procurement and effectively excluded Huawei and ZTE. On the other hand, the gap between rhetoric and reality of Sino-Japanese relations has been increasingly deepening due to the incongruences of naiatsu-led policies that consequently raised two-fold problems. Falling into the Inconsistency Trap Japan in the contemporary era of a top-down leadership guided by the prime minister’s office (kantei-syudou 官邸主導) could have broken away from the long-standing fragmented bureaucratic-led policymaking process (kanryou-syudou 官僚主導) particularly pertaining to Japan’s China policy. By contrast, it seems that Japan in fact has experienced serious setbacks due to an unprecedented dissent and competing interests within inner circle of policymakers, both in kantei and kanryou – illustrating how policy associated with China’s BRI have become much more complicated, politically dynamic, if not inconsistent. Bureaucrats from the Ministry of Economic, Trade, and Industry (METI) occupying most of the key Kantei posts find hard to reach consensus with their counterparts from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). METI whose primary interest has revolved around Japan’s participation in the BRI so as to courting regional infrastructure development has been voicing different stances than the MOFA which is stridently protective of its bureaucratic turf in supporting the free and open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) vision. Adding complexity, Abe’s personnel policy has been swayed by a faction led by Takaya Imai and Toshihiro Nikai appeared to pit against the camp anxious about security. Imai, an executive secretary to the prime minister and former METI official, who was directly appointed by Abe, has been considered the driving force behind Abe’s pragmatic moves on China. Imai even confessed that he is the one who rewrote the content of a personal letter from Abe to Xi in 2018, including the passage highlighting Japan’s conditional support for the BRI. During his visit to Beijing, as cited by the the People’s Daily, Abe even clearly mentioned the BRI as “promising.” This touched the nerve of some key groups in MOFA; just as a Chinese expert Shin Kawashima skeptically points out that Japan’s attempts to steer China towards such “global standard” would never readily be accepted by China. In short, vested interests cliques have clearly intruded into the foreign policy structure, which has resulted in the peculiar features of contemporary Japan’s China policy. The double stances of Japan – drifting toward a more pragmatic and proactive policy at the same time – raise doubts over the longevity of Sino-Japanese diplomatic détente. Hot Politics, Cold Economics Relatedly, the dawning recognition that Japan and China had done well economically under the long-standing paradigm, “cold politics, hot economics” (seirei keinetsu) may now be reversed. The current relationship seems rather “hot politics, cold economics” (seinetsu keirei). As mentioned above, while Japan now has practically accepted China’s BRI, albeit with several conditions, the seemingly-enthusiastic business sectors are pondering 52 infrastructure projects. By and large, it is because Japanese business and Chinese SOEs, two key pillars of infrastructure collaboration, are completely and diametrically opposed in their views and perceptions about the long-term investment risks. Japan holding back a consortium with a Chinese counterpart for a $6.9 billion Thailand rail project last December epitomizes this kind of “hot politics and cold economics” on the infrastructure nexus. Although it was expected to be a symbolic model of joint project from various accounts, the 220 km rail project linking the three main airports of Suvarnabhumi, Don Mueang, and U-Tapao in one hour as well as part of core infrastructure projects in Thailand – the Eastern Economic Corridor, was apparently dismissed from the memorandum of cooperation on 52 joint projects signed. The Thai conglomerate, Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group and the China Railway Construction Company, initially planned to collaborate with Japanese firms like Itochu Cooperation and Hitachi supported by the JBIC for the project. Nevertheless, just as happened in the case of Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway, the Thai government refused to provide a government guarantee and disagreed on Japan’s second proposal of a semi-high speed rail to minimize construction costs. Eventually, Itochu and Hitachi opted out of the projects. Another Japanese key stakeholder in the railway business, the Japan Railway Group is reluctant to take numerous high-risk projects even as they are simultaneously focusing on Indian high-speed railway projects. What can be implied from this case is the fact that Sino-Japanese collaboration in the infrastructure realm, which ought to be the key pillar of two countries’ mending relations, instead turned out to be an extra headwind regardless of a fair political wind. Indeed, the basis of policy paradigm currently underpinning two Asian giants’ relationships is at a crossroad.Cant Solve---General---1NCThere are too many hurdles to good relations – the aff cant resolve themKatagiri 19 [Nori Katagiri?is Associate Professor of Political Science at Saint Louis University. He is also Visiting Research Fellow, Air Staff College, Japan Air Self-Defence Force and Fellow Cohort 4 of the Mansfield Foundation’s US-Japan Network for the Future. He received his PhD degree in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania., "Evolution of Sino-Japanese Relations: Implications for Northeast Asia and Beyond," E-International Relations, 4-10-2019, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020These issues across the security and cyber dimensions have shaped the tension between the two, while still providing reasons for cooperation. To add to this already complex picture, Sheila Smith argues that several critical political issues have separated the two in the past few years – including historical disagreements, food safety, as well as political rhetoric on both sides. She points out a few contentious issues including Japanese politicians’ visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, China’s export of poisoned dumplings, and the territorial disputes in the East China Sea. None of these offer a clear-cut path to compromise, yet they shape the way they interact with each other (Smith 2016).Cant Solve---General---2NCAlt causes to bad relations Vogel 19 [Professor Ezra F. Vogel?is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard University. He has had a long association with Harvard, receiving his Ph.D. in sociology there in 1958, and then teaching at the university from 1967 to 2000, “Japan and China: Facing History,” Chapter 11 pg. 588 of the book, 7/30/19, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020The concerns that Chinese leaders have about Japan are reflected in the issues?they raise about history. The three most common issues raised by Chinese?leaders are: visits by Japanese political leaders to the Yasukuni Shrine, Japan’s?failure to acknowledge the horrors of the Nanjing Massacre, and the failure of?Japanese textbooksZero chance of the aff solving relations – its impossible Katagiri 19 [Nori Katagiri?is Associate Professor of Political Science at Saint Louis University. He is also Visiting Research Fellow, Air Staff College, Japan Air Self-Defence Force and Fellow Cohort 4 of the Mansfield Foundation’s US-Japan Network for the Future. He received his PhD degree in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania., "Evolution of Sino-Japanese Relations: Implications for Northeast Asia and Beyond," E-International Relations, 4-10-2019, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020China and Japan regularly hold high-level bilateral talks and routinely participate in multilateral discussions about regional cooperation, but trust deficits keep the two nations apart. In China, the CCP has managed to contain nationalist sentiment and public demand for greater autonomy to the extent that allows the Party to continue to pursue aggressive economic development projects. The CCP has done so by making efforts to restrain its citizens by cooling public anger towards Japan (Reilly 2011). In Japan, however, incidents like the high-profile, uncivil demonstrations against Japanese businesses in 2012 remain vivid in the minds of the Japanese, and CCP’s effort to rectify its image seems too political to be true. Furthermore, to most Japanese eyes, the CCP’s effort is hardly sufficient. China’s supposed restraint has failed to convince ordinary Japanese that China has become friendlier by any measure. Public surveys constantly put both nations’ public opinions of each other at low points, and without mutual efforts, that reality is unlikely to improve anytime soon. The cyber hacks and rivalry over the islands make it quite hard for both nations to improve relations quickly. The international community can, for now at least, rest easy, as socioeconomic interdependence and deterrence against military strikes prevents further deterioration of relations.Cant Solve---Timeframe---2NCIt would take decades to resolve historical mistrust Vogel 19 [Professor Ezra F. Vogel?is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard University. He has had a long association with Harvard, receiving his Ph.D. in sociology there in 1958, and then teaching at the university from 1967 to 2000, “Japan and China: Facing History,” Chapter 11 pg. 599 of the book, 7/30/19, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020It is unrealistic, considering the depth of the historical passions involved,?that China and Japan will quickly develop feelings of trust and become close?friends. That may be a goal for several decades in the future. A reasonable goal?for the next decade would be to manage their relations in a straightforward, frank, and businesslike way so that the two countries can become reliable partners. It is unrealistic to expect that China and Japan in the next decade will enjoy “hot politics.” But if they can continue to?expand?their?cooperation?in?such?enterprises as the Belt and Road Initiative, in developing joint projects for solving environmental issues, and in multinational organizations, it is not impossible that they could achieve “warm politics.”Rels High Now---1NCNo reason to vote aff – China Japan relations are at an all time high – COVID provesNakamura 20 [Kazuki Nakamura is a member of the Young Leaders Program at Pacific Forum. He has previously assisted with research at New York University and UNCTED., "Is the Japanese Public on Board With the ‘New Era’ of China-Japan Relations?," The Diplomat, 6-10-20, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020The relationship between the United States and China keeps deteriorating over various issues, from the U.S.-China trade war to the COVID-19 pandemic to the new Hong Kong national security law. At the same time, however, the Sino-Japan bilateral relationship seems to be getting better. Japan’s Shinzo Abe made an official visit to China in 2019, the first by a Japanese prime minister in seven years. During the visit, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Abe?agreed?to accelerate cooperation between China and Japan for a “new era.” This agreement was reflected most recently in the recent positive actions of both sides to work together to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. China and Japan have shown their willingness to stick with the promise to develop a “new era” for the bilateral relationship by finding areas for cooperation, not conflict, during the global pandemic.Rels High Now---2NCJapan China relations are not a problem – Economic incentives proveTachikawa 20 [Tomoyuki Tachikawa is a staff writer at the Japan Times news agency, "China cozies up to Japan and South Korea as ties with U.S. sour over coronavirus," Japan Times, 5-17-2020, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020While China’s tensions with the United States and Australia have been sharply intensifying over its handling of the new coronavirus outbreak, the Asian power has been apparently aiming to bolster ties with its neighbors — Japan and South Korea. As relations with Washington are expected to worsen at least until the U.S. presidential election later this year, Beijing has been making friendly overtures toward Tokyo and Seoul with an eye on economic revival after the pandemic passes, diplomatic sources said. Many foreign affairs experts are carefully watching what kind of foreign policy China will adopt at the postponed annual session of the country’s parliament, the National People’s Congress, scheduled to be convened next Friday. Recently, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has accused Beijing of failing to curb the spread of the virus, first detected late last year in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, and of not sharing relevant information in a timely manner. Trump has said the United States could even “cut off the whole relationship” with China, while threatening to impose tariffs as punishment for Beijing’s alleged mishandling of the epidemic in the critical early months. Amid growing uncertainties over ties with the United States, “China is really eager to strengthen cooperation with Japan to revive the economy, which was hit hard by the virus outbreak,” a diplomatic source said. “For Japan, China is an essential trading partner. Japan also thinks the economy cannot rebound without cooperation with China. They are unlikely to be willing to ignite a controversy,” he added. In March, the Chinese Foreign Ministry abruptly announced a temporary ban on foreigners entering the country. The measure has applied even to those who hold a valid visa or residence permit. Beijing, however, has sounded out Tokyo on partially easing the restriction so that businesspeople who test negative for the new virus can travel between the countries, Japanese government sources said. China has already started to allow the entry of South Korean businesspeople meeting certain conditions in an attempt to ensure a smooth supply chain, which has been seriously disrupted in the wake of the virus spread. President Xi Jinping was quoted by the Chinese Foreign Ministry as telling South Korean President Moon Jae-in during a phone conversation on Wednesday that Beijing and Seoul “were the quickest to set up a joint response mechanism, and have maintained a track record of zero cross-border infections.” “The two sides also opened the first ‘fast-track lane’ for urgently needed travels without compromising control efforts to facilitate the unimpeded operation of the industrial chain, supply chain and logistic chain in the region,” Xi told Moon. A source familiar with the situation in East Asia said, “For the time being, China’s diplomacy may be determined by how much some countries can contribute to the economy. I’ll be paying attention to what Foreign Minister Wang Yi says at the National People’s Congress.” Tokyo has also taken a softer stand against China than other nations, as the governments of the world’s second- and third-biggest economies have been trying to improve their ties by effectively shelving bilateral rows.Status quo Japan-China relations are high Nagy 19 [Stephen R. Nagy is a senior associate professor at the International Christian University., "A reset in Japan-China relations?," Japan Times, 10-24-2019, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020Comparing the state of Japan-China relations in the wake of Shinzo Abe’s return to the prime ministership in December 2012 to today, the bilateral relationship has come back to a semblance of normality. During this transition period, we had Japanese and Chinese ambassadors dueling on the BBC, comparing each other’s political leaders to the Harry Potter villain Voldemort in a farcical war of words. We had the Chinese government hold the 70th anniversary of the victory of the “Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression,” and Abe himself was vilified “a political villain, who was much like the terrorists and fascists on the commonly seen blacklists.” During the same period according to the Defense Ministry, verbal jousting has been accompanied by Japanese jets being scrambled to intercept Chinese military aircraft approaching its airspace 638 times in fiscal year 2018, an increase of 27.6 percent compared to 2017. These incursions into Japanese airspace continue to occur alongside regular incursions by Chinese government and other vessels into Japan’s territorial sea and associated contiguous zone. Fast forward to the 19th Party Congress in 2017, the “new era of Sino-Japan relations” narrative begins to emerge in President Xi Jinping’s China, paving the way for the historic and long anticipated meeting in Beijing on Oct. 26, 2018, between Abe and Xi. These contradictions raise many questions as to what exactly has changed in the bilateral relationship. Looking through the lens of a glass half full, the Maritime Self-Defense Force has conducted goodwill exercises with China’s navy for the first time in eight years. The Japan Bank for International Cooperation signed a memorandum of understanding with the China Development Bank to promote cooperation between them for projects in third country markets where Japanese and Chinese corporations are involved. This thaw in the area of security and cooperation in infrastructure are positive developments for both states. The goodwill exercises, although superficial, are a step forward in re-establishing defense exchanges after the nationalization of the Senkaku Islands.Rearmament: Solvency ***Any aff that reads rearmament link to the Japan SoPo DA***Alliance Prevents---1NCOnly US commitment prevents Japan from striking out on their own – Large-scale remil outside the alliance structure causes escalatory conflicts that draw in the USGerald Curtis 13, Burgess Professor of Political Science, Columbia University, "Japan's Cautious Hawks", Foreign Affairs. Mar/Apr2013, Vol. 92 Issue 2, p77-86, DOA: 9-13-15, y2k **NCC Packet 2020Ever since World War II, that pragmatism has kept Japan in an alliance with the United States, enabling it to limit its military's role to self-defense. Now, however, as China grows ever stronger, as North Korea continues to build its nuclear weapons capability, and as the United States' economic woes have called into question the sustainability of American primacy in East Asia, the Japanese are revisiting their previous calculations. In particular, a growing chorus of voices on the right are advocating a more autonomous and assertive foreign policy, posing a serious challenge to the centrists, who have until recently shaped Japanese strategy. In parliamentary elections this past December, the Liberal Democratic Party and its leader, Shinzo Abe, who had previously served as prime minister in 2006-7, returned to power with a comfortable majority. Along with its coalition partner, the New Komeito Party, the LDP secured the two-thirds of seats needed to pass legislation rejected by the House of Councilors, the Japanese Diet's upper house. Abe's victory was the result not of his or his party's popularity but rather of the voters' loss of confidence in the rival Democratic Party of Japan. Whatever the public's motivations, however, the election has given Japan a right-leaning government and a prime minister whose goals include scrapping the constitutional constraints on Japan's military, revising the educational system to instill a stronger sense of patriotism in the country's youth, and securing for Tokyo a larger leadership role in regional and world affairs. To many observers, Japan seems to be on the cusp of a sharp rightward shift. But such a change is unlikely. The Japanese public remains risk averse, and its leaders cautious. Since taking office, Abe has focused his attention on reviving Japan's stagnant economy. He has pushed his hawkish and revisionist views to the sidelines, in part to avoid having to deal with divisive foreign policy issues until after this summer's elections for the House of Councilors. If his party can secure a majority of seats in that chamber, which it does not currently have, Abe may then try to press his revisionist views. But any provocative actions would have consequences. If, for example, he were to rescind statements by previous governments that apologized for Japan's actions in World War II, as he has repeatedly said he would like to do, he not only would invite a crisis in relations with China and South Korea but would face strong criticism from the United States as well. The domestic political consequences are easy to predict: Abe would be flayed in the mass media, lose support among the Japanese public, and encounter opposition from others in his own party. In short, chances are that those who expect a dramatic change in Japanese strategy will be proved wrong. Still, much depends on what Washington does. The key is whether the United States continues to maintain a dominant position in East Asia. If it does, and if the Japanese believe that the United States' commitment to protect Japan remains credible, then Tokyo's foreign policy will not likely veer off its current track. If, however, Japan begins to doubt the United States' resolve, it will be tempted to strike out on its own. The United States has an interest in Japan's strengthening its defensive capabilities in the context of a close U.S.-Japanese alliance. But Americans who want Japan to abandon the constitutional restraints on its military and take on a greater role in regional security should be careful what they wish for. A major Japanese rearmament would spur an arms race in Asia, heighten regional tensions (including between Japan and South Korea, another key U.S. ally), and threaten to draw Washington into conflicts that do not affect vital U.S. interests. The United States needs a policy that encourages Japan to do more in its own defense but does not undermine the credibility of U.S. commitments to the country or the region.Alliance Prevents---2NCPerceived loss of US presence causes Japanese remilitarizationCéSar Chelala 15, Md, Phd, the Foreign Correspondent For Middle East Times International (Australia), "Abe's Wrong Rush To Militarization," 9-13-2015, Common Dreams, , DOA: 9-13-2015, y2k **NCC Packet 2020More recently, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called for a new interpretation of those policies, asking that they allow for “collective self-defense” and for Japan to pursue a more active deterrence policy. Because of what many perceive as a decline in American hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan may want to fill the power vacuum left by the US and play a more assertive role in regional security. To that effect, it has reached some military agreements with countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam that are engaged in territorial disputes with China. At the same time, Abe wants to revitalize Japan’s economy and meet increasing social security demands resulting from a worsening demographic situation. According to the Financial Times, in January 2015 Japan had reached a Debt/GDP ratio of 245, placing Japan as the most indebted nation. It is possible that a redefined military force would make Japan more assertive in the international arena while at the same time, through increased military sales, it would receive additional income to help balance its economy. On 2014, the Abe government lifted the ban on arms exports and hosted a trade show on military defense systems. On July 16, Japan’s lower house passed Abe’s security legislation, which potentially allows the use of troops in conflicts outside Japan, and sent it to the upper house. Not everybody agrees with Prime Minister Abe’s new push to militarization. Last June, Seiichiro Murakami, a veteran lawmaker from Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, wept during a press conference while denouncing Abe’s policies. “As a person who was educated under the postwar education system, I believe in the principle of pacifism, the sovereignty of people and respect of basic human rights should be something absolutely cannot be changed,” he said. Rearming Japan carries also the risk of igniting a regional arms race of unpredictable but certainly not good consequences for peace in the region. Given the extreme volatility in the region, Japan would do well to follow the precepts established in Article 9 of its Constitution.Reduced engagement causes remilitarizationLamont Colucci 15, Lamont Colucci is an associate professor of political science at Ripon College and a senior fellow in national security affairs for the American Foreign Policy Council. "Great Power Conflict: Will It Return?," January 2015, World Affairs Journal, , DOA: 9-15-2015, y2k **NCC Packet 2020Unlike the other great powers with which it competes, Japan is hampered by a Constitution that the United States wrote and also depends on America for large areas of its security. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is continuing the evolution away from both of these dependencies by slowly returning Japan to its intrinsic geopolitical imperatives. If Washington signals to Tokyo that it is downsizing its protections, Japan will accelerate its strategic independence. Traditionally, Japan’s grand strategy has been dictated by the need to secure the home islands and neighboring ones; control the strategic avenues to and from Japan for military and economic needs; ensure adequate resources for its economy and markets for its finished goods; and prevent a breakdown of domestic social order. The long rule of the Shogunate, stretching back to the early seventeenth century, was inward-looking, and broken by the imposition of foreign powers, notably the United States in 1854. Japan understood it needed to expand or expire. This thinking, in its extreme form, reached its apex in the 1930s, when Japan started World War II, and was tempered only by the postwar American occupation, followed by Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution and the US security guarantee. Article 9 renounced war and the ability of the Japanese state to possess a military, although this was changed in 1954 to allow a “self-defense force,” which began to resemble a great power military. For decades, Japan was governed by the Yoshida and Fukuda doctrines, which essentially enshrined these pacifist policies. Since 2012, however, the Abe doctrine has introduced an incredible transformation, in which Japan is asserting itself once again as it did prior to World War I. Much has been made of Abe’s 2013 “five principles,” chief among them the protection of universal values, such as freedom, democracy, and basic human rights; the guarantee that free and open seas are governed by laws and rules and welcoming the US “rebalancing” in the region; and the promotion of trade and investment, as well as the flow of goods, capitals, people, and services, through various economic partnership networks. However, the real change is deeper and more important. Also in 2013, the Japanese Cabinet, under Abe’s direction, approved Japan’s first national security strategy, made more possible by the creation of a Japanese National Security Council. In large part a response to China’s aggressive moves in the Pacific over areas such as the Senkaku Islands, the strategy argues that Japan needs to make a more “proactive contribution to peace,” i.e., it needs to contribute more to its military alliance with America despite its pacifist constitution. The strategy amounts to a plan for a five-year military buildup. Spending will increase to $240 billion, an increase of about five percent over the previous five-year plan. The document promises that Japan will respond “calmly and resolutely to the rapid expansion and step-up of China’s maritime and air activities.” It also declares North Korea a “grave and imminent threat.” It calls for the cultivation of “love of country” in Japan, and for “expanding security education” in universities. More controversially, it also promises to review Japan’s self-imposed ban on arms exports. Under the plan, Japan will transform its Self-Defense Forces into a full-fledged military, primarily by investing heavily in advanced war-fighting technology, space weapons, ballistic missile defense, unmanned aerial vehicles, a more mobile ground force, and expanded naval and coastal capabilities.Rearmament: Rearm BadGeneral---1NCJapanese military buildup turns the aff – China would hate itLiff 18 [Adam P. Liff is a nonresident senior fellow with the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at Brookings. He is also an assistant professor of East Asian international relations at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, "China and the US Alliance System," Cambridge Core, March 2018, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020In addition, since 2010, tensions over the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu Islands 钓 鱼岛 in Chinese), claimed by both countries but administered by Japan, coupled with major security reforms and efforts to tighten the alliance during Abe Shinzo’s second term of office (2012–present), are increasingly salient. Japan under Abe is seen as behaving provocatively on sensitive historical issues and actively pursuing “militarization,” while (allegedly) simultaneously and unabashedly “hyping China threats” (chaozuo Zhongguo weixielun 炒作中国威 胁论) in order to bolster domestic support for these measures.40 Since Japan’s so-called “nationalization” (guoyouhua 国有化) of the islands in September 2012, circumstances have worsened precipitously. In this context, Beijing interprets Tokyo improving its JSDF capabilities and tightening US– Japan security ties as directly threatening China’s territorial sovereignty – an increasingly incendiary flashpoint in Chinese domestic politics under Xi Jinping. One Chinese government analyst castigated Japan’s “unprecedented assertiveness,” blaming Abe for “the most serious [bilateral] confrontation of the past four decades” and accusing him of seeking to “encircle China” by “intervention” in the South China Sea, and “provok[ing] some ASEAN members to confront China.” According to this view, the allies are pursuing “partners globally to contain the rising China [sic].”41General---2NCJapanese Rearmament causes war with SoKo and ChinaBhide 19 [Jonah Bhide is a second year global policy studies masters candidate at the LBJ School where he studies the intersection of US national security and foreign policy. He interned with the US Military Delegation to NATO HQ in Brussels, Belgium in the summer of 2019. Jonah graduated from the US Air Force Academy in May 2018 with a BS in Political Science, "Rearming A Forbidden Military: Japan’s Self-Defense Force & Constitutional Revisions – Baines Report," No Publication, 2-15-2019, , DS] **NCC Packet 2020China’s political elite are quite conscious of the implications of constitutional revisions and accompanying buildup. In the past China has been critical of the disparity between law and military action, labeling Japan’s military activities a brutal violation of the pacifist constitution. Revisions would render these criticisms of military expansion irrelevant, but sources of tension would remain. Both Japan and China dispute ownership of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, and both share still-raw attitudes regarding the Second World War. And given China’s condemnation of joint and independent UK-Japan freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, Japan’s military activities will continue to be a significant regional tension. It is entirely likely Chinese information operations may target Japanese public opinion to mobilize it against the revisions and other defense policies this year. Similar agitations between South Korea (ROK) and Japan exist, including ownership disputes over the Takeshima/Dokdo Islands. Military tensions between the ROK recently flared when a ROK destroyer allegedly locked-on to a Japanese P-1 patrol aircraft, resulting in both sides terminating working-level talks to resolve issue. Seoul raised additional claims of Japanese aircraft buzzing (flying less than 150 meters above a vessel) ROK naval vessels, violations Japan has denied. As Japan revises its constitution to reflect its military expansion, higher military operations tempos are likely to increase the frequency of such incidents, which may spill over into other non-military elements of Japan-ROK relationsRemil causes widespread Asian war that goes nuclear and undermines Japan-ROK relations – Abe's recent moves are brink and presence is keyKim and Wong 15 (Jaehyung Kim, Kela Wong, University of Washington, The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, "The Evolving Security Challenges and the Geopolitical Necessities of the US Military Bases in Japan and the Republic of Korea" ) **NCC Packet 2020Most visibly, the deteriorated Japan-ROK relations would hamper the efficient cooperation among the US and its allies in coping with security challenges in East Asia (Chanlett-Avery, Manyin, Reinhart, Nelson & Williams, 2015). The region is currently experiencing various shifts of security strategies and partnership: 1) The PRC and ROK framed the Free Trade Agreement and would further expand their rapport beyond economic realm. 2) The DPRK reached out to Russia and Japan and gained economic resources to further develop its military capabilities and strategic posture. 3) Russia, with planned joint military drills, would further encroach into East Asia with military measures. 4) Japan established the détente with Russia and made geostrategic rapprochement with the DPRK. 5) The PRC would continue to strengthen its A2/AD strategy while fostering its regional influence beyond borders and economic measures. Accordingly, current geopolitical environment requires allied approaches towards security based on the multilateral-basis common understanding of the challenges because individual strategies could heighten the uncertainties. However, the task for the US is quite challenging: the antagonism was intrinsically ingrained into the South Korean national identity, and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)’s historical perception rather praised its “pan-Asiatic” efforts during WWII while denying the sole responsibility of wartime aggression (Olsen, 2008).4243 The Abe administration and LDP’s essential problem is that its erroneous perception of wartime history provokes a misguided resentment from the PRC and ROK against the Japanese nation, while invoking domestic controversies as well. Nevertheless, Japan and ROK’s mutual alienation would not only dissipate the existing resources but also complicate and destabilize the security by provoking neighboring countries in East Asia. Thus, the necessities for Japan-ROK rapprochement are dire for the US in countering existing challenges despite fundamental difficulties. Furthermore, although not explicit, the revision of article nine could reorient and develop the SDF posture in ways, and to the extent, in which Japan impairs the current efficacies of the US-Japan alliance and creates conflict direct towards the US national interest. With budget sequestration and increasing security burdens, the US government demanded increased role, or budget, from Japan for regional security (The Department of Defense [DoD], 2014; Vosse, Drifte and Blechinger-Talcott, 2014). Coupled with increasing global threats, the rearmament appeared compelling and inevitable for Japan (Matthews, 2003; Midford, 2011). 44 However, the constitutional revision substantially relates to the historical perception of the wartime context, and Prime Minister Abe’s militarization is fundamentally based upon the jingoistic interpretation of its wartime history. Unlike Japanese general public, the LDP’s wartime historical perspective was built into the benevolent fascist ideology by which the conservative politicians and bureaucrats have argued Japan’s wartime efforts as “inescapable and altruistic holy war” (Dower, 2012, pp. 112-31). The LDP’s victimhood of itself derived from the victor’s justice of the Allies and the world order that drove everyone into a brutality (Dower, 2012, pp. 112-23). Also, the LDP leadership tended to dismiss the public opinion, when differed from its own, in guiding the national development (Midford, 2011). 45Because of this, the elitist LDP leadership, despite the opposition from the public, may develop outcomes that go beyond the reach of the US soft-power, which would easily involve neighboring issues and evolve into a spiral of international conflicts just as the outbreak of the WWI in 1914. Essentially, the Abe administration’s militarization policy would destabilize the regional security and thereby produce complex scenarios for the US because current alliance system does not ensure stable relationship for tomorrow Conclusive Analysis of the Current Capabilities Regarding the comprehensive defense posture, the US still maintains a visible superiority over the PRC, Russia and the DPRK. The PRC’s military is not inherently hostile to the region’s security atmosphere, but its increasing military potential should caution the neighboring countries, particularly Russia and Japan. The PRC’s defensive measures would hardly cause destabilization, unless by miscommunication. Russia’s military modernization has also gradually garnered the growing potential of the Russian military and helped its military expansion towards the Far East. However, despite the lack of overall capacities, Russia’s aggressive foreign policy portended the possibilities of involving offensive measures of conventional weapons and the WMDs in potential conflicts. Additionally, the DPRK’s symmetric and conventional weapons capabilities are great concerns for the ROK’s existence and the security order in East Asia, while concurrently challenging the US national security. Without having to surpass the US military might, the essential threats of the DPRK’s military ultimately come from its offensive nature towards the ROK and the US. The DPRK’s asymmetric weapons that range from nuclear weapons to cyber warfare are therefore threatening to the region’s stability. The highly offensive measures of the DPRK’s SOFs, including the potential invasion of the ROK, are of particular threat. Therefore, the primary concern in the region’s security environment lies in the US commitments to Japan and the ROK. Nevertheless, the evolving strategies in the ROK and Japan complicated the security atmosphere and fractured the US security efforts in East Asia. Initially, the ROK’s strategic hedging towards the PRC in an attempt to mitigate the inter-Korean conflicts shaped the intra-regional relations complex. The ROK’s decision to prioritize diplomatic channels over military development subsequently made both the US and the ROK vulnerable to the dynamic security challenges in the Korean peninsula. Moreover, with corresponding weapons acquisitions, Japan’s militarization policy is intrinsically disposed to destabilize the security status quo in East Asia. Japan’s strategic shift towards Russia and the DPRK actually could give rise to the possibility of triangular strategic ties among the three states. Therefore, most pragmatic concerns for the US national security reside in Japan-ROK bilateral relations. The internal context of Japan and the ROK revealed the misguided representation of each other, which has been ingrained into both societies. However, the security cooperation between Japan and the ROK remains essential to the US security conditions because it not only mitigates regional military miscalculations but also maximizes the allied cooperation to enhance the intra-regional relations. In East Asia, the security environment experiences turbulent currents of evolving strategies and weapons developments. Contrary to conventional opinion, PRC’s comprehensive military developments and the WMDs should not be of significant concern to the US and the region’s security. On the other hand, the shifting strategies of Russia, the DPRK and Japan fundamentally challenged the status quo and invoke concerns for the US. Overall, the DPRK’s aggression could be only visible threat, directed towards the US national security. Nevertheless, except for the DPRK’s nuclear weapons, the US is not subject to a serious security challenge from others, although still liable to the provocations that would arise from shifting strategies and partnership. Conclusion In reconsideration of the US military bases located in the ROK and Japan, the most pressing concerns of the US lie in the security interests in East Asia, an increasingly complex and changing environment. In order to evaluate the options for the region, the US must assess the shifting balance of the East Asian countries and the US stance on emerging issues and possible threats to the security of the US homeland and allies. The rise of the PRC and its increase in political, economic, military, and diplomatic power is concerning to the US due to the PRC’s lack of transparency, but currently does not pose a critical threat to US security and the stability of the region. The PRC’s internally directed goals do not directly provoke a clash of interests between the PRC and the US, and ultimately, the military capabilities of the US remain superior to the PLA’s military growth and advances in the extreme case of confrontation. Russia’s rebalance to Asia has caused a significant shift in the political environment. While Russia's national security objectives and capabilities do not pose an existential threat to the security of the US and its allies in East Asia, Russia's strategic and diplomatic developments in line with the goal to return the country to Soviet era world status has the potential to destabilize the region's security environment. In spite of Russia's military modernization efforts, the country’s military capabilities in East Asia remain inferior to the US military. The DPRK’s nuclear program, asymmetric warfare capabilities, national goals and political rhetoric regarding reunification are the greatest immediate threat to regional stability and security and the US’s security responsibilities to defend the ROK and Japan. The nature of these security threats posed by the DRPK and Russia in the East Asia region require maintenance of a physical US military presence through the military bases, but allow for a reassessment of the military structures in place in the ROK and Japan. In regards to the PRC, the best option to approach the issues in the region is not through intimidation and increasing military power projection in East Asia to counter the growing military capacities, but to encourage dialogue and cooperation with the PRC. To counter the growing threats posed by the DPRK and Russia, the US should build-up allies’ military power and increase cooperation between Japan and the ROK to foster a more collaborative security environmentRearm causes insecurity Yuki Yoshida 13, Yuki Yoshida is a graduate student studying peacebuilding and conflict resolution at the Center for Global Affairs, New York University, "Japan's Militarization Would Threaten Regional Security," 8-8-2013, No Publication, , DOA: 9-16-2015, y2k **NCC Packet 2020Considering that Japan faces imminent threats in East Asia, including territorial disputes with China, Russia, and South Korea, and North Korea's nuclear threat, reinforcing military capability by establishing a national defense force would be rational. Also, Japan should no longer depend fully on the US as a safeguard. That being said, Japan's increase in military capability would most likely exacerbate regional security dilemma. In other words, security for Japan becomes insecurity for neighboring states, which eventually turn into insecurity for all. This could become an arms race among China, North and South Korea, and Russia and increase the cost of potential armed conflict. Additionally, enhancing military power will inevitably lead to increase in domestic taxes, which will create grievance among citizens. Moreover, if even a single Japanese soldier is killed in battlefield, the masses would soon lose confidence in the LDP, and the credibility of the party will be questioned, causing domestic instability. Furthermore, most importantly, the constitution amendment means betrayal of the determination of our grandparents not to repeat war and aspiration for peace. Thus, although amendment of Article 9 would seemingly improve security situation surrounding Japan, it will produces a number of undesirable consequences.Plan’s rearmament is perceived as unilateral Japanese militarization---that undermines stabilityJohn Lee 13 is a fellow at Sydney University's Centre for International Security Studies and a non-resident scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C. He was part of the Australian delegation at the Shangri-La Dialogue. "Japan's 'Pacifist' Militarization," 6-6-2013, WSJ, , DOA: 9-13-2015, y2k **NCC Packet 2020All that lies in the future, however. For now, Washington may welcome such talk, since the U.S. has long hoped its allies would take on a greater share of the security burden in Asia. To American ears, there is nothing menacing about Mr. Onodera's statement that Tokyo wants to play an enhanced role in ensuring peace and stability, upholding the norms of democracy, policing freedom of navigation and ensuring rule of law. But other governments in the region will be both intrigued and anxious about an awakening Japan, and Beijing may be downright irate. So Tokyo must work at reassuring its neighbors about its new strategy. For a start, it is critical that Japan receive America's blessing for enhancing its strategic role. Japanese military renewal has to be seen as one part of an integrated strategy of cooperation with Washington, since the U.S. is widely recognized (at least by every major regional player except China) as the primary force for stability in the region. Any perception of a unilateral Japanese bid for greater influence—driven by a dormant but still virulent nationalism—will be resisted by wary Southeast Asian countries. ................
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