Description
China's rise without effective balancing from the United States to counter its rapid expansion is a puzzle for many theories of international relations. This paper develops a theory of threat deflation in international politics to explain why great powers underestimate threats. Focusing upon the present Sino-American case, it makes three major arguments. First, unit level considerations, Deng Xiaoping's 24-Character Strategy, and the U.S. business community's economic influence caused a remarkable period of threat deflation by the U.S. and prevented effective balancing against China contrary to neorealism’s expectations. Second, the focus of the United States on al Qaeda and Iraq in the wake of 9/11 provided the opportunity for China to expand its interests absent balancing. Third, each of the four post-Cold War administrations, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, George Bush, and Obama, overestimated its influence within China and underestimated Han nationalism and the effectiveness of the Chinese Communist Party.
The paper is significant for three reasons. First, through offering a theory of threat deflation, the paper aids the understanding of inadequate threat perception as a danger afflicting the relative decline of hegemons. Second, empirically, the Sino-American security competition is the dispositive struggle of the 21st century, and so understanding its origins is essential to informing explanations of its probable intensity and duration. Third, the paper offers a critique of major U.S. national security actors and strategists in the Sino-American context.
