Jim Lacey: War With China?

Jim Lacey is professor of strategic studies at the Marine Corps War College. He is the author of the recently released The First Clash and Keep from All Thoughtful Men. The opinions in this article are entirely his own and do not represent those of the Department of Defense or any of its members.

‘The two economies [the United States and China] are linked with each other and with the rest of the world in a manner unparalleled in history. This mutual dependence can be an immensely powerful deterrent, in effect a form of mutually assured economic destruction.” So concluded the RAND Corporation in a study released last week.

A hundred years ago Norman Angell came to precisely the same conclusion. In his 1910 book The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power in Nations to Their Economic and Social Advantage, Angell outlined a world where the profitable pursuit of war is impossible because of the interdependence of national economies and the means of modern quick communications. Therefore, war had become “economically and socially futile.” Angell’s book was a tremendous bestseller and fed a widespread turn-of-the-century belief that growing world trade — it was the first era of globalization — would clearly lead to a hundred-year extension of the Pax Britannica.

Angell’s utopian dream of universal peace through greater economic integration took hold in both Britain and the United States, despite the obvious evidence that the world was becoming progressively more dangerous. Growing global tensions were a result of the diplomatic failure of the established powers to make room at the table for two burgeoning new powers — Germany and Japan — that were pushing themselves onto the global stage....