Engagement With China: Lessons From United States - Japan Relations

By: Anna Douglas Piper

Today, the United States and China compete across almost every facet of the global market. Whether surrounding nuclear weapons, Taiwan, or economic relations, nearly every conversation has grown tense. Cooperation has broken down since 2018, largely due to various administrations’ trade wars, specifically the Trump administration’s strategies of hostile engagement.

Attitudes coming from China reflect much of the same hostility. Advocates of aggression have grown stronger – one of the only things Democrats and Republicans agree on today is a tough stance against China. This won’t change on its own, even with the upcoming election. 

We must not fall into this trap. A pre-Trump engagement strategy is not only possible, but necessary.

The U.S. must aspire to stabilize the tense relationship and allow conflict resolution. Mutual benefits include addressing shared challenges, like climate change and nuclear proliferation. An engagement strategy aligns with U.S. principles of international cooperation and diplomacy and ensures peace and stability are supported globally. 

To examine the effectiveness of engagement in promoting a liberal world order, we can turn to historical experiences with Japan. 

The U.S. saw confidence grow under the Bretton Woods System as trade barriers were reduced and Japan experienced rapid growth. As this growth continued into the 1980s, the U.S. began to worry about Japan’s rising influence. Economists warned Congress that Japan would surpass the U.S. in economic size. By 1995, Clinton was taking relations to the brink of a trade war – the U.S. even briefly imposed 25 percent tariffs on luxury vehicles.

A breakdown in cooperation was clear. 

Many argue this supports the realist prediction that engagement will fail in the long run. However, U.S.-Japan cooperation in the 1990s continued, countering the realist theory. A 1988 bilateral deal opened Japan’s beef, orange, and cigarette markets to imports, and the collision over automobiles was averted when the U.S. withdrew luxury car tariffs a month later. 

Though the end of the twentieth century witnessed international tensions that arguably undermined liberal institutionalism, this tension did not produce a collapse of the international system. Despite tensions with Japan, cooperation remained.

The realist perspective that increasing tensions inevitably lead to trade wars does not always explain how countries will interact. To better understand U.S.-China relations, we can consider the neoliberal institutionalist prediction that countries continue to move to a liberal world order.

Moves like trade restrictions are only a partial solution to combat a rising China. Export controls by the U.S. are unlikely to succeed unless other participating countries do the same, which they won’t do for fear of Chinese retaliation. It seems to be unavoidable that restrictions will either stagnate and dissipate or the two economies will forever be separated — the latter being unrealistic. 

The conflict between China and the United States is not inevitable, but depends entirely on the next moves from both sides. It is clear, then, that the U.S. must return to increased engagement with China.

Responses may vary. Countries with close economic relationships with China, including South Korea and Japan, may view engagement positively. However, others with competitive concerns may profit from a limited U.S.-China trade flow. Additionally, regions like Taiwan may not react positively to an apparent U.S. acceptance of China’s policies. While countries may be wary of China’s growing regional influence, increased engagement is more effective than trying to convince them to confront China through other means, given fears of retaliation.

The urgency for renewed engagement is clear. Rising tensions threaten global stability and undermine U.S. efforts to pursue cooperation. Both nations have the opportunity to address pressing challenges, though it remains to be seen how China would respond to such a move. We cannot rely on the upcoming election for a change. The stakes are high, but the attitude that the U.S. adopts creates impacts far beyond the borders of Washington and Beijing.

Pakistan: A Democracy In Danger

History is repeating itself in the most dangerous fashion in Pakistan.  In an eerie parallel with Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s ascent to power in the 1970s, Pakistan’s current Chief of the Army Staff Asim Munir appears to have taken a few pages from his predecessor’s book. The military has established itself once again as the most powerful institution in the nation. 

The state of civil military relations in Pakistan is troubling for a myriad of reasons. For starters, in a healthy democracy the military should subordinate itself to civilian control. However, since Pakistan’s inception, the military has a long standing history of political intervention credited to weak political institutions, inadequate political leadership, and entrenchment of civil military bureaucracy. Such issues with Pakistan’s civil military relations can be traced back to British colonial policies. British generals continued to head Pakistan's military until 1951, when the authority was transferred to General Ayub Khan, who became Pakistan’s second president through a military coup. 

While the nation has always had a strong military presence, it has had weak political institutions that have failed to establish an effective political and constitutional system. This has seriously handicapped the government’s ability to properly respond to the multitude of external and internal challenges that the country faces. In this power vacuum, the bureaucratic military elite have been able to increase their authority and power over the country’s political elite. They have been able to garner so much influence, that despite the civilian government’s inability to control them, the country’s army stands out as the most trusted institution - with more than 80 percent public approval.

Recent examples of the military’s dominant role in the Pakistani political and economic sphere include the previous Prime Minister Imran Khan granting General Bajwa a position as a member of the government’s National Development Council in 2020. Additionally, Bajwa met privately with top business leaders to discuss ways to aid the failing economy, increasing the military’s role in the economic and political issues that were plaguing the nation. The then Prime Minister Imran Khan’s desire to work with the military through political concessions shows the inherent tension in civil-military relations in Pakistan. 

The true show of the overly politically involved Pakistani military happened in April 2023, when former Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted from power after a vote of no confidence from the General Assembly. His removal from office was clear to all that it was not a matter of his incompetence or supposed corruption, but rather because the army felt threatened by his brazen imperative to disagree with them. At this point, tensions between Bajwa and Khan were at an all time high due to an ongoing dispute following Khan’s refusal to endorse the appointment of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief that Bajwa wanted. In May 2023, Imran Khan was arrested, despite his protests that the Army was behind threats against his life and that prominent military leaders were behind ongoing plots against him. Khan’s arrest is not unusual in Pakistan’s political history - with the past five prime ministers having been either indicted or imprisoned after leaving office. In an ironic twist, Khan rose to power in 2018 due to the military’s support and saw himself removed from office in 2022 when he lost their approval. As the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace put it, “where the Pakistan Army’s will exists, it carries, and typically persists no matter the consequences.” 

Since Khan’s arrest, protests have shaken the country and the military has cracked down in terrifying ways. In June 2023, the new Chief of Staff Asim Munir fired three high ranked commanders and punished another fifteen for their conduct during pro-Imran Khan protests. Additionally, protestors from Khan’s party PTI have accused the military of human rights violations while being held in custody. Most recently, in March 2024 protests erupted once again over what many believe to have been a rigged election. The police have been accused of launching brutal retaliations to these protests and arresting over one hundred protestors in the process. 

The precarious state of Pakistan’s democracy is concerning for the future of the nation. Without healthy civil-military relations and a stable democracy, the country can never implement much needed policy reforms. Pakistan can never be a nation that serves its citizens if it remains in the clutches of a corrupt military that chooses its own power over the best interests of the people.

A Pandemic in 2024

By: Avery Sigler

In January 2020, Haiti was declared two-years cholera free, after a decade-long struggle to eliminate the disease, which was not native to the island. While left unacknowledged until 2016, cholera was introduced by UN volunteers who came from Nepal to help Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake. Only ten months later, in November of 2020, there were 600 confirmed cholera cases, and another 6,500 suspected. Haiti was no longer cholera-free, and a new pandemic was about to begin.

As of April 11, there have been a total of 31,705 cholera cases worldwide, with a case fatality rate of 2.2 across the global south, including Africa and the Caribbean. The UK, where the largest outbreak of cholera occurred in the mid-19th century, has not had a case since 1893. These cases are primarily concentrated in former colonies, with twenty-five of the twenty-seven countries with recent reported cases fitting this descriptor. The World Health Organization classified the cholera pandemic as a grade three emergency in January 2023, its highest internal level for emergencies. And yet, it has barely made the news.

You would be hard-pressed to find someone who does not understand the implications of pandemic in 2024. However, in the case of a disease such as cholera, which has been eliminated for so many years, those in global north countries tend to overlook it likely due to the fact that it is a disease that is relatively isolated to low-income countries. Cholera is caused by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Severe forms of the disease without immediate treatment can kill in hours. There are many strains of the bacterium but only two - O1 and O139 - can cause outbreaks, though O1 has caused all recent outbreaks. The spread of the disease is easy to avoid if a country has proper infrastructure, such as sewer systems. In modern times, the disease only affects countries that can’t afford proper sanitation in the water-supply. There also is a vaccine, known as the Oral Cholera Vaccine (OCV), but countries that lack the infrastructure for its development don’t have the means to vaccinate against it causing higher infection rates. In 2023, fourteen countries requested a total of 78 million OCV from the World Health Organization, but only 38 million were available. As of March 8th, only previous requests for vaccinations can be filled. Though this deadline has recently passed, a spike of cholera cases in another country that does not have the technology to replicate these vaccines, would be left completely vulnerable.

The othering of countries, from developed to developing, is likely the link between the high CFR and the underreporting in the media. From the perspective of global north nations, cholera is not a threat due to development on the backs of the countries suffering today. Those in the countries currently facing a cholera pandemic have to live with that constant fear, the same way that countries like the United States did during COVID-19, but without the infrastructure and the governmental influence to help to improve public health. Cholera may seem to the people in Western countries a disease of medieval times, but it is a very real threat to millions of  people worldwide.