Ferguson vs. Kissinger on the future of China, and what it means for the rest of us
Historian Niall Ferguson likes to think big. If most Washingtonians are satisfied with shaping a discrete national policy issue, Niall Ferguson isn't satisfied unless he can challenge the global conventional wisdom of a generation.
Ferguson's most recent strategic expository centered on the geopolitical implications of China possibly eclipsing American and Western power, reflections he recently shared at Chatham House in London [published as, "The West and the Rest: the Changing Global Balance of Power in Historic Perspective," May 9, 2011.
His compelling if provocative analysis built not only on his latest tome, Civilization: the West and the Rest, but also the much-anticipated sweeping history, On China, written by the Henry Kissinger, and published today.
Kissinger's narrative sees Confucian roots in contemporary Chinese decision-making and upheavals. This is a consequential conclusion, because for Kissinger it means that as China's power ascends the temptation to wield power the way Europe or even America has done so will be tempered by tradition. Rather than seeking imperial rule, for instance, China will be content with finding its place under heaven, essentially as the regional Middle Kingdom. It is also likely to employ a classical Chinese strategy of playing external barbarians off one another, only occasionally clinching a few of the barbarians into its ambit.
Thus, Kissinger emphasizes civilizational and cultural continuity as the common thread throughout Chinese history. In contrast, Ferguson emphasizes the simple but dominant theme of power, in a sense that Hans Morgenthau and John Mearsheimer would readily recognize (and indeed which Kissinger would have felt more comfortable with during his more youthful days as a statesman). At the heart of Ferguson's analytical question is this: what if China has not only figured out how to catch up with the West, but has also adopted an imperial Western conception of power?
Ferguson puts the breadth of historical events into the vernacular of the digerati, describing six important institutions and ideas that led to Western ascendency as 'killer applications.' As had become obvious in the 19th and 20th centuries, the West dominated the international relations; it did so, according to Ferguson, because it exploited competition, Newtonian scientific advancement, the rule of law and property rights, modern medicine, a consumer society, and a serious work ethic. The problem, he adds, is that the rest of the world has now downloaded these applications. And no country is now more poised to exploit them than is China....