To be sure, many other specialists are more pessimistic about Chinese goals in Asia. However, if China’s policies threatened to harm the important national interests of other Asian countries, states like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, and the Philippines would be hardly helpless, especially if they act collectively to defend themselves and their vital interests, even in the absence of U.S. participation.

Suppose, however, that this argument is wrong. Suppose that China has or soon develops both the power and the goal of gaining hegemony over Asia. Then, the weaker states in the region bandwagon with China rather than seek to balance against it. 

The argument here is that even in this worst-case scenario, U.S. national security would not be at stake. While it is certainly true that we have economic and other non-security interests, they are not so crucial that we must be prepared to go to war to protect them, especially against nuclear powers.

But What About Taiwan?

To be sure, Taiwan is a special case, at least morally, given the real Chinese threat to its independence and democracy. It must be admitted that a U.S. military withdrawal from the region might well lead Taiwan to develop nuclear weapons, and Japan and South Korea have the capability of following suit. 

Nevertheless, given the risks of a major war between the United States and China—a war which many U.S. military studies have predicted we would lose—understandable concerns over nuclear proliferation should not dominate our Asian policies. In any case, the overall effects of the already-existing nuclear proliferation elsewhere have been stabilizing rather than destabilizing—MAD certainly worked in preventing the Cold War from becoming hot. While there can be no guarantee that the same result would occur in Asia, the real question is whether nuclear proliferation can be prevented, especially if that goal requires America to go to war with China.

In considering this issue, let us assume the worst case, in which China should turn out to be a radically expansionist state that somehow gains control of all the resources and population of Asia. Even then, U.S. national security—our only truly vital national interest—would not be at stake. As stated earlier, there are only two ways in which our security could be threatened: by conventional invasion or by a nuclear attack. Even if China somehow gained control over the population, land masses, and economies of Asia, it would not be capable—or sufficiently lunatic—to try to cross thousands of miles of ocean and invade a nuclear-armed United States.

On the other hand, the nuclear danger is all too real. That danger would not be increased by Chinese expansionism since China already has the capability of launching a massive nuclear attack against the United States from its own soil. That is, since, for all practical purposes, the danger is already absolute; by definition, it can’t be increased. Put differently, an irreversible state of MAD between the United States and China already exists, so that even if China placed nuclear weapons outside its borders, they could do nothing more than—as Churchill memorably put it—“make the rubble bounce.”

What follows is that we should avoid any war against China, even so-called limited wars that may escalate into nuclear ones, particularly if we are likely to lose them. Put differently, the most likely “threats” (Chinese border conflicts with neighboring states, military clashes over sovereignty claims in the South China Sea, and even its designs on Taiwan) have the least relevance to genuine U.S. national security, while the theoretically most dangerous one (a large-scale extension of Chinese military power into the Western Hemisphere) is the least likely to occur. 

In that light, as in Europe, the United States should announce that over a five-year period, we will withdraw our military power and commitments from Asia. This will alarm the U.S. allies in the region, but that cannot be a decisive argument in favor of continuing current policies that are highly dangerous to us. We have to make independent judgments about the nature of U.S. interests, the necessity of the use of force, the chances for success, the costs and risks we are prepared to accept, and the probability that states that feel threatened can defend themselves.

What is really at stake for the United States in Asia is, then, not national security or truly vital interests, but rather America’s image of itself as a Pacific power and the consequent projection of its military power into Asia. The task now is to reassess the unexamined axioms or premises on which U.S. balance of power policies in Asia have been based and avoid yet another Asian war, likely another losing one, and this time potentially a nuclear one.

Non-Interventionism, Not Isolationism

Everyone engaging in the current debate over U.S. foreign policy, of course, understands that nuclear weapons have changed the nature of international politics. Yet, the full implications of the nuclear revolution have been characteristically understated. That is, on the one hand, our nuclear weapons, together with our overwhelming conventional military power, ensure that regardless of the balance of power in Europe and Asia, no state or combination of states could threaten our national security by invading our homeland. Yet, on the other hand, the spread of nuclear weapons to other states means that U.S. national security can now be threatened, not merely by major powers like China or a resurgent Russia, but even by lesser nuclear-armed states like North Korea.

Since a state of MAD—mutually assured destruction—between us and all nuclear-armed states is almost certainly irreversible, national security can be protected only by avoiding wars with such states. Yet, the anachronistic but still unexamined “balance of power” axiom threatens to lead this country into catastrophic wars with our rivals.

To be sure, even if such wars are averted, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and possibly other weapons of mass destruction means that our cities are vulnerable to catastrophic terrorist attacks, even by non-state actors. However, not only are regional balances of power irrelevant to such threats, but also overseas U.S. military interventionism is much more likely to increase rather than solve the WMD terrorism issue, whatever its magnitude.

What follows is that the basic U.S. national security policy should be one of military non-interventionism. Such a policy should not be confused with general “isolationism,” for it does not preclude but rather emphasizes overseas political, diplomatic, and economic goals and policies.

Jerome Slater is a professor (emeritus) of political science at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is the author of  Mythologies Without End: The U.S. and the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1917-2020.

Image: Igor Grochev / Shutterstock.com.