Afkar-e-Taza ThinkFest

‘It’s natural for China to seek to be great military power’

By our correspondent

LAHORE: Distinguished professor John Mearsheimer, the world’s top expert on structural realism has said that 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.

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.

‘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. 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.

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. Dr Ebadi called on women to take control.