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How China’s Military-Civil Fusion strategy fuels China’s ambitious military aims

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by Orlanda Gill

Flag of China. Source: Pixabay

Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) is a Chinese state-directed strategy which seeks to modernise the Chinese military by creating a distinct Chinese military-industrial complex. The MCF strategy effectively seeks to eliminate the barriers between the civilian and military sectors, which consist of legal, political, communicative, and bureaucratic divisions. Once eradicated, the result is a fused civil-military sector which allows for simultaneous military and economic growth. Whilst similarities can be found in the Civil-Military Integration (CMI) of the United States in that it shares the same goals of the civilian and military industry working closely together, CMI demands co-operation either within the military industry, or with a civilian company, rather than a complete removal of barriers between the civilian and military industry. The goal of the MCF is to have a ‘world-class military’ by 2050. Whilst the exact meaning is unclear, it can be interpreted to mean China desires to be amongst the world’s greatest military powers. How this would be realised can be understood by analysing China’s strategic guidelines which can be most closely translated to operational doctrine in the West. Realisation of this aim can also be examined through China’s attitude towards the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) which for China has placed and will place technological and scientific innovation at the center of war. The MCF therefore must be understood with regards to China’s strategic guidelines and the RMA. Overall, it can be demonstrated that the MCF is about having a modernised military which can fight and dominate in wars that demand technological and scientific superiority.

The MCF is not a new concept. The idea that economic growth cannot be without military is found in Deng Xiaoping, in the early 1980s, who focused on economic development before military equipment modernisation. It was, however, not until the ascension of President Jiang Zemin in 1993 when focus started to shift back more towards defence than solely economic growth. Jiang emphasised dual-use technologies, combining military facilities and civilian infrastructure to streamline military and econoomic spending. These core components, which are at the heart of the MCF, have endured from Jiang until the present, under Xi Jinping. The MCF, however, shares the most similarities to the policies of Xi’s predecessor  Hu Jintao whose Civil-Military Integration (CMI) in 2009 sought to integrate the civilian and military sectors.

Whilst this brief historical overview demonstrates the evolution of a concept, the MCF is best understood at the implementation level. The strategy can be seen at work at many different levels: institutional, provincial, and local. At an institutional level, there is a growing number of the former and current senior defence industrial cadre serving in prominent party and state posts, while President Xi Jinping leads the Central Commission for Integrated Military and Civilian Development to monitor Military-Civil Fusion policies. Outside of government, the MCF also extends to universities for research. Currently, Tsinghua University is pursuing human-machine interaction with funding from the CMC Science and Technology Commission, which will likely contribute to China’s modernised military and concept of intelligentised warfare. At the provincial level, among production facilities, beginning in 2019, ten provincial-level governments are investing money into research and overseas acquisitions through guidance funds. At the local level, looking towards Tianjin, an AI Military-Civil Fusion Innovation Center was set up next to the National Supercomputer Center. This was coordinated with the Academy of Military Science.  The MCF, therefore, should be understood as a guiding principle enforced and supervised by the state to guide the civilian sector to military usages, whilst retaining the civilian economic benefits from technologically innovating and supplying dual-use technology.

President Xi Jinping has remarked that the MCF strategy is instrumental, and this view is supported by China’s prioritisation of technology in contemporary warfare. The Gulf War (1990-1991) and Kosovo War (1998-1999) for China indicated a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and therefore a new standard and future trend which puts information superiority and thus the quality of technology as a key factor in military victory and for what constitutes a powerful military.  This understanding continues in the PLA’s strategic guideline in ‘winning informatised local wars’ in July 2014. An important (although not the only) aspect of this strategic guideline is the role of information. Informatisation ‘refers to the collection, processing, and utilization of information in all aspects of warfighting in order to seamlessly link individual platforms in real time from across the services to gain leverage and advantage on the battlefield.’ The demand for information superiority therefore  places importance on the ‘cyber, space, and electromagnetic domains’. The importance of advanced information technologies is thus heightened and the MCF is made a crucial process for the PLA to advance technological innovation at a rapid pace in comparison to its adversaries to gain information superiority.  Additionally, the MCF allows China to capitalise from the tech-dominated global RMA and to become a  ‘world-class military’ by 2050.

The MCF is also important in what appears to a new and emerging concept known as intelligentised warfare. This may be understood as a ‘uniquely Chinese concept of applying AI’s machine speed and processing power to military planning, operational command, and decision support’. In President Xi Jinping’s report to the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, intelligentisation was elevated to a guiding principle for China’s military modernisation. This  conceptualisation of future warfare marks an evolution from informatised warfare. Differences can be analysed in that intelligentised warfare involves an ‘algorithm confrontation’ rather than ‘systems confrontation’ that characterises informatised war. Winning would therefore come from having an ‘algorithm advantage’. Furthermore, whilst informatised warfare recognises the importance of the space and cyber domain, intelligentised warfare would expand the domain of warfare into the cognitive domain which concerns ‘the field of decision-making through reasoning’. Superiority in this domain would be achieved through enhanced cognitive capacity of human combatants via integrated human-machine intelligence. The expansion of warfare into new domains and the potential Revolution in Military Affairs through AI would certainly help produce a ‘world-class military’. The connection of intelligentised warfare and MCF is made explicit when we observe that the PLA’s Science of Military Strategy, an authoritative book on the PLA compiled by the PLA’s Academy of Military Science (AMS), states the intention to ‘Promote deeper military-civil fusion, and leverage societal resources for the development of military intelligentisation’. The MCF is thus integral to China’s capacity to leverage science and technology to bolster their combat capabilities as well as to lead in what China envisions as future wars.

Overall, the Military-Civil Fusion is an ambitious concept and strategy that seeks to modernise the military to great heights by fusing the civilian and economic sectors. The question of its success perhaps depends on whether the PLA is a world-class military by 2050. Nevertheless, the strategy has further implications; it promises China a technological edge, the strengthening of economic security and domestic and international prestige. Therefore, rather than becoming overly attached to what may be perceived as an end goal, it is important to remain open so as to see where the fusion is leading China.

 

Orlanda Gill is a MA National Security Studies student at the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. Her interest is in East Asian security with a key focus on China’s foreign and domestic policy. She is also currently exploring the technology-security nexus especially with regards to China.

Orlanda is a part of Strife’s Women in Writing programme.

You can find her on Twitter at @orlanda_gill.

 

The Overextension of Sovereignty: How states have dampened opposition to annexation

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by Andrew Scanlon

Kremlin Dome of Senate. Photo Credit: iStockPhoto.

In the twenty-first century the calculation that war is too costly to pursue in the conventional manner has kept large scale inter-state conflict from occurring. States are no longer willing to send tanks rolling across borders to invade neighboring countries. The military, economic, and political cost/benefit analyses simply do not justify those actions in the present state of international relations. Yet, this does not cure a state’s appetite to expand its control in favor of pursuing its national interest. However, it does shift the strategy used to expand its presence. The use of proxies to engage on behalf of a state has been documented in conflicts such as the ongoing war in Yemen. A number of states utilize this strategy to pursue plausible deniability. An alternative method to mollify the international community over aggressive actions has been increasing in prevalence – extending sovereignty over peoples or structures outside of their present jurisdiction in order to more forcefully justify the aggressor’s presence. By over-extending their claim of sovereignty, these states attempt to shift the perception of their actions from aggressors to defenders and dampen any possibility of a united front willing to confront their activities. We have seen this strategy play out in Crimea and eastern Ukraine under President Vladimir Putin in 2014, and more recently in the South China Sea and the Himalayas by President Xi Jinping.

The Russian case in Ukraine

The Russian Black Sea Fleet’s continued access to naval bases in warm-water ports in Crimea and Russia’s support for the fiercely pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych were national interests, but a traditional military incursion into Ukraine would have triggered costly consequences. Instead, Vladimir Putin began using rhetoric related to the protection of ethnic Russians in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Following violence in Kiev, Putin declared that “We understand what worries the citizens of Ukraine, both Russian and Ukrainian, and the Russian-speaking population in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine… we retain the right to use all available means to protect those people. We believe this would be absolutely legitimate.” After mass protests in Kiev and the formation of pro-Russian separatist militias in Ukraine, Putin used the doctrine of Protecting Nationals Abroad (PNA) as justification for sending military supplies to separatists and deploying “little green men” into Crimea and eastern Ukraine. But many of these people Putin claimed to protect were not citizens, but merely ethnic Russians or Russian-speaking peoples. Whether the doctrine of PNA is lawful or simply tolerated, its traditional application has been to citizens, not foreign nationals with ancestry to the state utilizing the doctrine. Nevertheless, in 2019, Putin issued a decree allowing close to 3.5 million people living in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donbass and Luhansk to obtain Russian passports and brings Putin’s actions closer to those previously allowed by the international community.

Putin did not stop at protecting ethnic Russians. He also used historical claims to justify retaking territory. In a speech to a joint session of parliament asking for the formal annexation of Crimea, Putin professed “All these years, citizens and many public figures came back to this issue, saying that Crimea is historically Russian land and Sevastopol is a Russian city. Yes, we all knew this in our hearts and minds”. Russia’s relinquishing of Crimea to Ukraine, in the process suffering a ‘historical wronging’, and its subsequent use as a rationalization to retake territory followed the framework of previous annexations. A number of international leaders compared the move to Hitler’s annexation of Sudetenland in 1938. The UN General Assembly has adopted resolutions urging Russia to withdraw military forces from Crimea and supplies from going to eastern Ukraine. A certain amount of backlash was inevitable following the annexation of territory, but Putin would have been naïve to believe that there would have been silence after such a move. However, other than remarks by world leaders and a number of U.S. and EU economic sanctions, Putin has been relatively free to pursue his interests in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. His use of the PNA doctrine and historical sovereignty over territory allowed him to keep the conflict, and ensuing fallout, below a level of escalation consistent with traditional military invasions.

China’s Mountain and Sea Strategy

While Russia has used the PNA doctrine as justification for interference into neighboring countries, China has used infrastructure. In the South China Sea, the Nine Dash Line asserted by China encompasses vast majorities of the sea that extend far beyond the usual exclusive-economic zones given to each state as a result of the United Nation’s Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Chinese explanations for this broad claim are based on historical use of the sea by China dating back thousands of years. In modern times, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Navy (PLAN) has been constructing artificial islands in the South China Sea since 2013, allowing them to issue claims of sovereignty over disputed territory. In April, China created two new administrative districts in the South China Sea. This month, China drafted a new law that would expand the Chinese Coast Guard’s ability to enforce its sovereignty over the islands, permitting them to destroy foreign construction on islands claimed by Beijing and fire weapons on foreign ships.

China has now duplicated this strategy on land. In recent weeks, China completed the initial construction of a new village where the borders of India, Bhutan, and China meet in the Himalayan Mountains. This came after a June border clash in the Ladakh region of the Himalayas, near Kashmir, that resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese casualties. The new Chinese village is reported to be constructed within the territory of Bhutan, just south of the Doklam Plateau. Bhutan and China have been engaged in territorial disputes for nearly 35 years, much of which is focused on the western regions of Bhutan. The Doklam plateau is strategically significant for India’s continued access to its eight northeastern states, as well as their land borders with Bhutan and Myanmar. Under Chinese control, they would have the ability to block this access. The new Chinese village may only be the first in a series, much like the artificial islands, that would give China anchor points to protect the ‘sovereignty’ of Chinese territory or peoples.

These anchor points are core components to the strategy of Chinese expansion. States, including Australia, Japan, Vietnam, and Malaysia, are concerned with a resurgent China, its brazen aggression, and the potential of forceful annexation of territory. These fears present a major diplomatic challenge to China’s longer-term strategy. [[i]] Therefore, China has attached rhetoric to provocative actions in an attempt to alleviate concerns over their rise, engaging in a “rhetorical trap”. China has used rhetoric such as ‘China’s peaceful rise’ to assuage fears over actions that would otherwise seem more hostile. The rhetoric emphasizes the protection of sovereign entities, instead of engaging in military conflict on existing territory of sovereign states. This rhetoric has typically been utilized around actions in the South China Sea, but Beijing may begin using similar terminology regarding its efforts in the Himalayas.

Both the Russian and Chinese strategies are aimed at expanding territorial control without the stigma or risk of conventional conflict over existing territory, structures, or peoples. This shifts the conflict from a conventional military one to a more hybrid model that incorporates higher levels of rhetoric and international public opinion. Both the Russian and Chinese approaches try to build a framework that give them a defensive right to use force instead of an aggressive seizure of territory. While these strategies have allowed Russia and China to extend their ambitions over neighboring territories, how long will it take for their neighbors, and world leaders, to effectively respond to these enigmatic strategies… if ever?

 

[i] For more on the diplomatic challenges facing China in Asia over their renewed presence as a great power, Anisa Heritage and Pak K. Lee (2020) use an international order perspective to analyze the tension in the South China Sea, available here.

Andrew Scanlon is a MSc candidate in International Relations at the University of Edinburgh and an External Representative at Strife. Prior to postgraduate studies, he completed is B.A. in Political Science from the University of Dayton. During his undergraduate, Andrew worked for the Ohio Attorney General’s office and in the United States House of Representatives. His areas of research interest includes blockchain and its use as a tool for diplomacy, the impacts of the conflict in the South China Sea on the current international order, and international political economy.

Why Biden Will Not Get Soft with China

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by Martina Bernardini

President-Elect Joe Biden, then in his capacity of Vice President, walks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, shortly after his arrival at Andrews Air Force Base during a 2015 visit to the United States (Image credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The election of Joe Biden as President of the United States is meaningful for several reasons, but foreign policy stands out as one of the most important. While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the subsequent crisis in Transatlantic relations challenged the resilience of U.S. hegemony, the widespread enthusiasm to Biden’s election demonstrates that the U.S. historic allies still want – and require – an engaged United States on their side. Taking the reins of U.S. foreign policy in this particular moment in the history of the international system, however, is not an easy task. The biggest challenge lies in re-affirming the U.S. position in world affairs, a grand strategy that will contribute to building a strict balance between Washington and Beijing, to show that the absolute decline of U.S. power has not occurred.

During his presidential campaign, outgoing U.S. President Donald J. Trump argued that Biden allowed China to become a threat to the United States by supporting China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization in 2001. Such assumption indicated that for Trump, if Biden became President of the United States, he would get soft with China. The recent history of U.S. foreign policy, however, dismisses this thesis. In 2000, in fact, together with eighty-two U.S. Senators and 237 members of the House of Representatives, Joe Biden did vote in favour of the China Trade Bill, which authorised ‘the extension of nondiscriminatory treatment (normal trade relations treatment) to the People’s Republic of China, and to establish a framework for relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.’

The approval of such a bill by the U.S. Congress accompanied U.S. support for China’s accession to the WTO. At the dawn of the 21st century, this move represented – at least to U.S. policymakers – China’s official embrace of a world order based on the American-led ideals of free trade and democracy, a trend that was set in motion by President Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush. China’s entry into the WTO was indeed positively welcomed both by Democrats and Republicans – by Presidents Clinton as well as George W. Bush – because it was seen as the coronation of a grand strategy aimed at bringing China into a pan-American trade regime. Consequently, Biden’s vote in favour of the China Trade Bill does not mean that, as President of the United States, he will adopt a concessionary China policy. Incidentally, the exact reasons for his support of China’s integration into the global trade system increase the probability that Biden’s foreign policy towards China will not be accommodating.

Biden’s vision of the United States in the world reflects the American exceptionalism that drove the United States towards superpower status by spreading the American soft power and democratic ideals abroad from the Spanish-American war (1898) to Obama’s presidency (2008-2016). For Biden, this means that the U.S. has the duty to lead and inspire the other powers of the international system. In this framework, his administration’s foreign policy plan is to lead the United States to re-establish such a relationship with the international community after four years of isolationism under Trump.

This foreign policy approach will consequently bring Sino-American relations back to the Obama years, when Washington recognised that China represented a challenge for U.S. power that had to be addressed firmly, without undermining the bilateral relationship nor the stability of the international system, of which the United States intends to be the guarantor. In the last phase of his presidential campaign, Biden anticipated how he is likely to approach Beijing. For example, he criticized Trump for not having acted on the issue of human rights in the Xinjiang region, but at the same time, he talked about working with China on climate-related matters and the COVID-19 pandemic. That is to say, that open hostilities are unlikely to break out, but Biden will want the U.S. to take a firm stance against China in the key fields where the U.S. leadership among its allies and its great power status are at stake.

The most delicate grounds for Sino-American relations in the near future are two: trade and technology. Biden will inherit the trade war that Trump launched during his years in office as an attempt to reverse the course of the growing U.S. trade deficit with China. When he was Vice President from 2009 to 2017 under Obama, the United States pursued a multilateral economic strategy to reach the goal of re-balancing the U.S. balance of payments with China. Today, this approach is no longer an option, mainly because Biden will face a bipartisan consensus for toughening the U.S. China policy.

As David Shambaugh explained, the Democrats might not have fully agreed on the utility of tariffs for U.S. national security, but they were not against Trump’s tough China policy overall. A cross-party general indisposition and the willingness to take effective action towards China have risen in U.S. Congress because China challenges the U.S. power on many fronts, and exactly because Biden recognised the need of rebalancing the economic relations with China already during his Vice-Presidency, he is expected to be determined to reach such goal. For now, Phase One of the Economic and Trade Agreement between the U.S. and China that was signed this year remains in place, and Biden declared that he is not intentioned to cancel such agreement, at least not immediately. The first step for the Biden administration’s China policy will thus be to get a sense of where the historical U.S. foreign policy partners stand vis-à-vis their commercial relations with China.

Alliances are likely to be the starting point for a firm stance on the technology front as well. ‘The United States does need to get tough with China. If China has its way, it will keep robbing the United States and American companies of their technology and intellectual property,’ Biden wrote in Foreign Affairs last spring, adding that the best way to confront the Chinese technological challenge is to build a ‘united front’ with allies. Much has been said about the U.S. semiconductor sector as at risk of being exploited by China, which led the U.S. Department of Defense to finally add Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) – the largest chipmaker in China – to the U.S. Entity List on December 18, 2020.

The list in question, which is run by the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security, contains the names of foreign persons, governmental organisations, and companies that are subject to specific license requirements for the import of items from American suppliers. Consequently, any operation held with one of the subjects present in the Entity List is considered at risk by the U.S. government, and will therefore be closely monitored. The move comes as the final act of the most vigorous measures that the outgoing Trump administration implemented towards Beijing before Biden takes office on January 20, 2021, fearful that the incoming administration would soften the line.

This, however, is not likely to happen, because Biden’s vision of the U.S. in the world will merge with the clear bipartisan support of a hard line with China coming from Congress. The incoming Biden administration will thus aim to bring the tensions on the commercial and technological fronts to a higher strategic level especially by working on reinvigorating Transatlantic relations. Biden’s overall approach to foreign policy will be guided by his vision of the U.S. in the world, which, on the one hand, is strictly related to the historical conception of American exceptionalism, but, on the other hand, must resiliently adapt to the shape of the 21st Century’s international system, which demands a cooperative approach on climate change, migration, and global health. This means that the world will not enter a ‘new Cold War’ – a misleading term that is very often overused to describe Sino-American relations – but that Biden’s foreign policy towards Beijing will contribute to a redefinition of the terms of great power competition in a globalised world, which is not necessarily an easier scenario.

Martina is a PhD Candidate at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. She has been awarded the Leverhulme Scholarship ‘Interrogating Visions of a Post-Western World: Interdisciplinary and Interregional Perspectives on the Future in a Changing International Order.’ Her research focuses on the history of U.S. foreign policy towards China, particularly on the role of China in U.S. President George H.W. Bush’s Grand Strategy for a post-Cold War World Order. She is an alumna of the School of Politics founded by former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta, and she holds a first-class honors Master’s degree in International Studies from Roma Tre University, where she also completed her BA in Political Science and International Relations. 

After the US Elections: Chances for a European Strategy on China

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by Gesine Weber

EU: the referee in the great-power competition that is the US-China relationship? (Image credit: ImagineChina)

Over the past four years, the EU’s inability to balance its position between the US and China proved to be extremely challenging. Its member states can neither afford to loosen their ties with their long-standing ally across the Atlantic, nor risk a large-scale decoupling from the giant in the East. The alliance with the US is an essential security guarantee for Europe and perceived as vital, especially by countries in Eastern Europe. Putting this relationship at risk would leave Europe’s eastern flank exposed to the unpredictable aggression from Russia.

At the same time, China holds crucial political weight in international affairs: besides its status as a major trading partner for Europe, Beijing is now heading four out of fifteen UN organisations. Turning completely away from China could therefore be seen as a rejection of global cooperation with an increasingly global player. As such, the EU finds itself in a delicate balancing act. Decision-makers across Europe urgently need to prevent the EU from falling as the first victim of the Thucydides trap between the two powers.

Keeping China on the political agenda

The necessity for the EU to find a common strategy for China is not new. Since the election of American President Donald J. Trump in 2016, the challenge of mitigating US-China competition grew to become an important issue for policy-makers in Europe. Despite transatlantic relations at their lowest point during this time, Trump’s China policy spurred on a European awakening towards China. This shift happened in two ways. Firstly, it put active policy-making vis-à-vis China and the Indo-Pacific high on the political agenda, counter to the region’s relative neglect in the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) before.

Secondly, however, European reluctance to endorse the US’s maximum pressure strategy towards China underlined the diverging opinions and thereby unveiled the lack of a comprehensive EU strategy on China. Despite the release of documents such as the strategic outlook on China or the 2020 Agenda for Strategic Cooperation, there has, so far, not been a comprehensive guideline or strategy on the EU’s current and future action towards China in the different realms of foreign affairs, ranging from trade to security, to technology, so on and so forth.

Presently, should President-Elect Joe Biden wants to credibly translate his value-based foreign policy discourse into practice, there is a need to cooperate with the Europeans. In this context, finding a common approach towards China might be possible at least in some policy areas. Although President Biden will most likely seek closer cooperation with the US’ European partners, there will be little patience in Washington for intra-EU or EU-NATO power struggles or debates on the wording. This is especially the case for France and Germany: the two most influential EU member states are currently getting lost in semantic quarrels on European strategic autonomy – a term that is highly contested in Germany and a concept strong advocated for by Macron -, although both actually want the same things, to advance European security and defence.

US elections as a potential driving force for EU strategy-making

Over the history of European integration, the functionalist approach of ‘form follows function’ often demonstrated the EU’s ability to overcome challenges. New policies and approaches were first and foremost designed to serve a certain objective, and institutional adaptation could follow at a later stage of this process once the output matched the expectations. In this sense, the US elections could catalyse European strategy-making.

As EU leaders have already declared their willingness to cooperate with Biden on China, it is now important for the latter to define their priorities and identify areas of cooperation. Such a development ought to happen first among the member states and then between the EU and the US. Despite the EU member states’ diverging opinions on some issues, especially on the 17+1 format, there is a growing consensus that the EU requires a common approach to China.

Accordingly, a window of opportunity is opening here for European strategy-making. Such a China strategy, however, is not to be solely focused on the identification of threats. No, this exercise should also concentrate on drafting a positive agenda on China. The potential of global cooperation, with a broad regional and multilateral approach, is to be pursued. If the EU and its member states achieve this objective and manage to present a comprehensive approach on China – ranging from foreign investment to security in the Indo-Pacific to regulation of new technologies and environmental challenges – strategy-making will succeed thanks to geopolitical drivers — and without getting lost in technical debates. Instead of wedged in between China and the US, the EU could emerge as the balancer of both.

Gesine Weber is a first-year PhD Candidate at the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London, and works as a Program Assistant for the Paris Office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She holds a master’s degree in European Affairs (cum laude) from SciencesPo Paris and a master’s in Political Science from Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include European defence cooperation, which she focuses on in her PhD thesis, the CSDP, geopolitics and questions of global order.

 

Parsing the Safe Passage

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by Matthew Ader

“They can’t fight!” by Frederick Burr Opper, January 1896, originally published in Puck. (Image credit: National Archives)

Scholars and policymakers around the world are turning to history to understand how to navigate the onrushing collision between the ailing United States of America and an increasingly assertive China. The most famous example, expounded upon at length in Graham Allison’s Destined for War, is the clash between Sparta and Athens as documented by Thucydides. However, the most recent hegemonic transition, that of Britain to the United States, deserves significant attention – it is well-sourced, exhaustively documented, and involves national actors still relevant today. That makes it a valuable case study.

However, little work has yet been done to model this period in a way, which would allow the clean transfer of lessons learnt to the modern context. Even Kori Schake’s Safe Passage, written explicitly with the intent of informing Sino-American competition, is an excellent history before it is a work of political science. The relative paucity of overarching models means that policymakers must either fall back on heuristics or delve into intricate historical details.

This article attempts to split the difference by deriving a broader model of hegemonic transition from the circumstances of the Anglo-American case, with the hope that it will ease comparative work between the historical and contemporary situations.

I argue that the transition can be broken down into five distinct phases:

  1. Potential for competition (1756 – 1823) – the United States begins to grow in capability, but Britain is not yet aware of the potential threat.
  2. Recognition (1823) – Britain recognises the United States as a potential threat.
  3. The window of opportunity (1823 – 1914) – Britain conducts policy to (in most cases) conciliate the United States as the two nations move towards parity.
  4. Moment of transition (1916) – the United States surpasses Britain, as a result of British losses and American industrial growth during the First World War.
  5. Settling into a new order (1917 onwards) – the United States becomes the new global rule-setter, and Britain adjusts its position accordingly.

The United States’ growth in power began before the American Revolution, with the Seven Years War and American independence, but a combination of internal weakness and British distraction with eastern conquests and ambitious Corsicans – not to mention America’s poor performance in the War of 1812 – meant that it took until the 1820s for senior British officials to directly recognise the future potential of the United States as a major disruptive influence. Notably, and seemingly uniquely in terms of hegemonic transitions, this was recognised long before the United States even began to approach military parity with Britain. This may be due to traditional British lack of confidence in its own power, and also the naval character of said power – as Lord Palmerston observed in 1858, the simple reality of American geography rendered it invulnerable to British domination even in the absence of a major US force.

Given that Britain recognised the potential for competition relatively early, they had a large window of opportunity to apply policy. Instead of launching a preventive war, which would have been ineffective given the fact that Britain could not achieve lasting dominance over the United States, they pursued a consistent policy of conciliation. During the Oregon boundary dispute (1846), the Trent Affair (1861), and the Venezuelan Debt Crisis (1895), among other crises, Britain de-escalated even when it held the upper hand in coercive force. British bankers and merchants were encouraged to invest in the United States, even as propaganda about a joint Anglo-American destiny, linked by shared Anglo-Saxon heritage, percolated into American culture.

This was sagacious policy and was enabled in large part by the early recognition of the potential threat the United States posed and subsequently extensive window of opportunity. Given 80 years, most diplomatic relationships can be transformed in major ways – this is much less viable over shorter time frames. The result was that at the moment of transition, towards the end of the First World War – as British policymakers acknowledged that American industrial power so outmatched their own that America held the upper hand in any interaction, as was evidenced by the Paris Peace Conference and the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty – the United States looked on Britain not as a weakened rival, but as a culturally, economically, and at least somewhat strategically aligned partner. Debate persists, however, on the specifics of the Anglo-American transition of power, with many scholars placing it in 1945. However, I would argue that the passage happened in 1916 and was already visible at Versailles. Nevertheless, Britain continued to play a global role arguably disproportionate to its means. The USA, in turn, did not emerge as a hegemon until after the Second World War.

Why A Model?

Given that the historical record exists, why would a model of that transition be helpful? Principally because it allows clearer comparative analysis and the codification of lessons learnt.

First, in terms of comparative analysis, we can transfer this model to Sino-American relations relatively clearly. The potential for competition existed throughout the 1990s and 2000s as China grew in power, but the distracted United States only recognised the threat in 2009 with the Pivot/Rebalance to Asia. Others would argue that this recognition came even later, with the American declaration of China as a near-peer competitor. The United States is now in the window of opportunity vis a vis China, as the relative gap between the powers narrows, and must implement policy to forestall or cushion its decline. If current trends continue unabated, there will be a moment of transition, either when China peacefully surpasses American power; or when its aggressive moves run into a mutual red line.

Rather than attempting to draw difficult comparisons based on historical events in the Anglo-American relationship, the existence of the model allows references to history without getting lost in the details. Similarly, the model allows a clearer discussion of lessons learnt. British success stemmed in large part, I would argue, from early recognition of the American potential as a competitor. Others might suggest it was the result of effective policy within the window of opportunity. A model equips us with a common vocabulary to discuss a difficult topic.

This is not, of course, perfect. The model itself is applicable to Anglo-American hegemonic transition, and I believe Sino-American too, but it carries with it the weight of hindsight – assuming as it does that China will at some point fight the United States or move past it in some peaceful yet vital way. Equally plausible is the idea that China may fall short of hegemony, not due to American action within the window of opportunity, but internal socioeconomic weakness. Another possibility not fully incorporated in this model is that the United States and China may reach parity and remain there for a long period, with neither able to act as a hegemon. And, of course, in the general sense, having an avowedly simplifying model often makes things more complex, not less.

Despite that, given the growing importance of hegemonic transition, it is important to ensure rigour and clear communication in debates around it. This model, or something like it, may go some way towards helping in that effort.

Matthew Ader is an undergraduate student in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London with an interest in climate change and grand strategy. He tweets occasionally from @AderMatthew.