Nobody is sleepwalking in Beijing. It seems as though Washington is

Japan and China: 

Not yet 1914, but time to pay attention

by Dan Blumenthal 

Max Hastings's new book, Catastrophe 1914

The growing tensions between Japan and China are coinciding menacingly with the 100th anniversary of the First World War. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe evoked this parallel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week when he said the two countries must avoid the fate of Britain and Germany. A Chinese government source helpfully responded by stressing that China's senior leadership had formally decided not to have a war with Japan (well, that's a relief...). But another senior Chinese business leader at Davos said that China could put an end to the impasse by suddenly seizing the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands by force before Japan or the United States had time to respond. This same bravado and visceral anti-Japanese sentiment was on display with recent senior visitors from Beijing to Washington just before Davos.

If there are parallels to be drawn to 1914, they had better be the right ones. The prevailing narrative in Barack Obama's administration seems to be drawn from Christopher Clark's book The Sleepwalkers, which portrays the Great War as a tragic escalation by all sides with equal complicity and moral failing. The administration has formally accepted Chinese President Xi Jinping's proposal for a "new model of great-power relations," despite high-level démarches from some allies that it not do so. Why? Because Xi has described this formula as the best way to avoid the tragic wars between rising powers in the past. This may be a perfectly reasonable approach by Washington, if not for the great uncertainty surrounding China's strategic aims. For example, what does Xi have in mind? A peaceful handover of the reins of global leadership from Washington to Beijing? It is unclear that Washington has thought through the implications of this "new model" for global order. And what the rest of Asia sees, even if this is not what the administration intended, is a deliberate shift in Obama's second term toward a bipolar condominium with China. Those living in Beijing's neighborhood want China to emerge as one of many, hopefully democratic, powers in Asia with the United States as the security partner of first resort.

Origins of war by Donald Kagan

.............................

Read more: www.aei.org