On key global security issues, there is little hope that China will play a constructive role in areas such as reversing the Iranian and North Korean nuclear threats. Given the prospect that China will continue to grow more powerful in the coming years, the U.S. strategic response will inevitably involve deploying forces and building alliances that deter China from undertaking aggressive actions. U.S. economic and security policies should convey a clear message to Beijing: China is welcome to integrate itself more fully into the global economic and security system from which it benefits, but there are consequences for destabilizing the system. In providing security leadership in Asia, the United States needs to build meaningful hedges against Chinese military adventurism. Washington must ensure it has adequate military forces to reassure allies and partners in Asia and deter Chinese aggression.

To hedge against Chinese belligerence, the United States must create a more cohesive system of like-minded allies and friends. Australia, Japan, India, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea all share common goals with the United States: they also want to benefit from economic relations with China while maintaining a balance of power that checks China’s more aggressive security behavior.

The United States has never before faced such a dynamic society, one with which it is both deeply enmeshed economically while simultaneously engaged in a competition in the security sphere. America should cling to this awkward embrace, even while preparing itself in case the relationship ends in tears.

Dan Blumenthal and Phillip Swagel are the authors of the recently released book, An Awkward Embrace: The United States and China in the 21st Century. Mr. Blumenthal is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Swagel is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Image: Flickr/Tilemahos Efthimiadis.