should we pursue the PRC or our interests?

a question about China's global role

One last question hit me from the China conference at Carlisle Barracks last week. As everyone reading this doubtless knows, we are rapidly reaching a ‘zero sum’ view of China’s actions around the world: if China does something, it must be bad for us therefore we must act militarily to prevent that from occurring. If I heard one theme last week, this was probably it more than any other yet I did not hear the accompanying national interest threatened beyond ‘China is there’. Why ss China in a country a threat to the United States is left hanging as if it were so obvious only an ignoramus would ask.

The ‘zero sum’ views did characterise the Cold War, leading to a number of proxy wars and military interventions. The classic was Southeast Asia where the United States ultimately replaced the colonising French upon their 1954 defeat at Dien Bien Phu because we assumed the Ho Chi Minh’s North Vietnamese forces had to be driven by Soviet impetus. We rarely remember that colonialism tried, almost invariably unsuccessfully, to extinguish nationalism.