Afkar-e-Taza ThinkFest: ‘It’s natural for China to seek to be great military power’

LAHORE: Distinguished professor John Mearsheimer, the world’s top expert on structural realism, said Sunday China will try to dominate Asia just as the United States dominates the West,

According to a press release, he was speaking at a session at the ThinkFest Online on ‘Why a Cold War between China and the United States is inevitable.’ Prof. Mearsheimer iterated that theory is central. ‘All policy makers use theory to make sense of the world,’ he said.

Professor Mearsheimer, who has written several bestselling books on realism, noted that it is only natural for China to seek to become a great military power after it has become an economic might. ‘That is what great powers do, it has little to do with the Chinese mind or ideology,’ he said.

‘Every power wants to be a regional hegemon and China will try to do the same,’ he noted. ‘If the Chinese have learnt something from history it is that they should never be weak. They suffered in the “Century of Humiliation” and they will never want to repeat it,’ Prof. Mearsheimer explained. ‘China will soon develop significant power projection capabilities which will bring it into a Cold War with the US,’ exclaimed Prof. Mearsheimer.

He further explained that China now sees itself as the regional hegemon in Asia and does not want the US at its doorstep any longer. He said that despite Chinese protestations to the contrary it is important to see ‘What China does rather than what China says,’ and that all evidence points towards Chinese military expansion and projection in Asia. He said that in three places it would even get a little hot, in the South China Sea, straits of Taiwan and even the routes to the Persian Gulf.

Explaining the position of the United States, Professor Mearsheimer stated that in the twentieth century the US had gone to great lengths to counter other hegemonic powers, be it Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union and therefore it is but natural for it to follow the path to maintain its own hegemony. He noted that till the Trump administration, both Democrat and Republican administrations were taking China very lightly and ‘foolishly let China grow into a major power.’ But Trump changed the approach: ‘Trump was right that China needed to be contained, but his pitfall was that he wanted to do it unilaterally,’ said Prof. Mearsheimer.

‘In fact Trump not only wanted China contained, he wanted it rolled back,’ he explained. When asked about the new Biden administration by journalist Ejaz Haider, Prof. Mearsheimer said that he did not foresee any major change, except that ‘Biden is a multilateralist and he will build a coalition to counter China. But there is little chance of any reversal of the stance against China under the new administration,’ he noted.

Professor Mearsheimer also elucidated that this time round the benefit the US has is that most of China’s neighbours also do not like its hegemony and therefore might help the US in countering it. ‘I predict that Russia will eventually support the US against China, as China is a greater threat to Russia than the US,’ he argued. Explaining his reasoning, Professor Mearsheimer said that while US and Russia relations were not good in the recent past, the Chinese expansion into Central Asia, Russia’s traditional sphere of influence, has made them very nervous. ‘Since Russia is a declining power, it will join with the US to counter the very real threat from China,’ he said.

On India, Professor Mearsheimer said: ‘India is not going to be a legitimate world power for a long time.’ However, he noted that unlike the Cold War when there was no actual threat from either the US or the USSR, this time India has a real conflict with China at the Line of Actual Control, and hence India will easily go to the US camp. Already he noted that the India were concerned that their Navy was not developing at a pace to order to counter the growing Chinese presence in the Indian oceans and that they saw Chinese presence in the Persian Gulf as a real threat. Pakistan, on the other hand, he noted, will remain firmly in the Chinese camp even though ‘the US will try its best to create a Pak-India balancing to counter China.’

Professor Mearsheimer concluded that while he saw China as a revisionist power, seeking to reset the world’s power balance, he does see opportunities for the US and China to collaborate. He noted that even during the Cold War the US and the USSR collaborated on nuclear non-proliferation, and so it is still possible to cooperate during this cold war too. ‘Cooperation in Climate Change, healthcare, especially pandemics, and even economic cooperation will continue, but that will have little effect on the reality of the emerging Cold War between China and the United States,’ he stated.

Earlier, Dr Shirin Ebadi, 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate from Iran, gave a keynote lecture in conversation with senior lawyer and chairperson, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Hina Jilani.

According to a press release in a talk focused on women rights in the modern Muslim world, Dr Ebadi emphasised that wrong interpretations of religious edicts have led to the oppression of women in Muslim world.

‘There are the laws which relate to God which cannot change, but laws relating to human are to be interpreted according to the times,’ she maintained.

Dr Ebadi called on women to take control: ‘Men have always been the interpreters of religion throughout the world, the time has come to counter that by women to take charge,’ she noted.

‘Religion has been abused to perpetuate patriarchal culture, simply because women have been absent from the table,’ she underscored. Therefore, women ‘must be equipped with knowledge to make their own way in Islamic countries,’ she exclaimed.

Engaging with Dr Ebadi, Ms Jilani said that her preference was for a government to be based not on any religion, but on rights and responsibilities. Only such a government could ensure equality and justice.

‘Pakistan has one of the best equality clauses in the constitution, and yet is not implemented in practice,’ Ms Jilani lamented.

Mentioning the Feminist Movement in Iran, Dr Ebadi pointed out that over 200 women are behind bars on frivolous charges, showing how much the present regime is threatened by them.

‘Pakistan is lucky that it did not become a theocracy, or else women rights would have been even more curtailed,’ said Dr Ebadi.

Ms Hina Jilani then stated that the predicament of Iran and other Muslim countries is fast becoming a reality in other countries as well where religion is being used as a grab for authoritarianism.

‘Look at India, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, for example, in each of these countries the majority religion is oppressing minorities, and so this is a wider issue now,’ she underscored.

A book authored by Christopher de Bellaigue — ‘The Islamic Enlightenment: The Modern Struggle between Faith and Reason — was also launched.

Conversing with lawyer Salman Akram Raja, de Bellaigue said the book is in fact a story of three cities, Cairo, Istanbul, and Tehran and the movements which started there at the beginning of the 19th century. At the outset, the author noted that ‘a number of projects of Islamic Enlightenment failed because they were a programme of authoritarian modernism.’ Thus, in fact, he said that his book ‘was less about Islam and more about Islamic societies and how they dealt with the challenge of modernity.’

Speaking on Egypt, de Bellaigue noted that reform in the country was brought from the top. The senior Sheikhs wanted modernization and with it came military development. In Istanbul the changes in Cairo were closely watched, and the Sultan also attempted change. Istanbul was better poised for change as for a long time it was exposed to Western ideas, especially with it being once a seat of the Byzantine Empire. De Bellaigue then noted that ‘the setting up of street lights then became a good excuse to talk about enlightenment and shining a light,’ in the Ottoman Empire. The pressures then unexpectedly brought forth a type of a constitution in 1878 which is earlier than many places across the world.

In Iran, reform was also a top-down affair and the twin influence of Britain and Russia pushed further change. Iran got a constitution in 1905, and the spread of the telegram, connections with British India, etc., meant that change could not be thwarted.

De Bellaigue also noted that the Islamic enlightenment was never a defined project and was an agglutination of different currents that came together and then separated once more. In explaining this decline, the author stated that it was based on a series of reactions to various existential and intellectual threats coming from outside. The devastating effects of the First World War coupled with the reformulation of the map of the Middle East and the creation of a new Jewish state in the very heart of the middle east, all were emergences and needed responses. These areas have seen an apogee of authoritarian progressivism, then Arab and Turkish nationalism, and finally along with it the reaction from the Islamist movements. The author noted that the affected people have not been able to reconcile their lived ways with these developments. This further creates fear and a visceral dislike of that which is the ‘other’.

A book written by Prof. Ramachandra Guha’s — “The Commonwealth of Cricket” — was also launched for which he was in conversation with senior editor Osman Samiuddin.

Guha stated that this book was his tribute to cricket players from small towns to big leagues in India, Pakistan and beyond. He stated that it ends with a nostalgic notion of what cricket means to a rather old man.