Stabilizing the U.S.-China Rivalry

Michael J. Mazarr, Amanda Kerrigan, Benjamin Lenain

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The geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China embodies risks of outright military conflict, economic warfare, and political subversion, as well as the danger that tensions between the world's two leading powers will destroy the potential for achieving a global consensus on such issues as climate and artificial intelligence. Moderating this rivalry therefore emerges as a critical goal, both for the United States and China and for the wider world.

The authors of this report propose that, even in the context of intense competition, it might be possible to find limited mechanisms of stabilization across several specific issue areas. They offer specific recommendations both for general stabilization of the rivalry and for three issue areas: Taiwan, the South China Sea, and competition in science and technology.

Key Findings

Several broad principles can guide efforts to stabilize intense rivalriesEach side accepts that some degree of modus vivendi must necessarily be part of the relationship.

Each side accepts the essential political legitimacy of the other.

In specific issue areas, especially those disputed by the two sides, each side works to develop sets of shared rules, norms, institutions, and other tools that create lasting conditions of a stable modus vivendi within that domain over a specific period (such as three to five years).

Each side practices restraint in the development of capabilities explicitly designed to undermine the deterrent and defensive capabilities of the other in ways that would create an existential risk to its homeland.

Each side accepts some essential list of characteristics of a shared vision of organizing principles for world politics that can provide at least a baseline for an agreed status quo.

There are mechanisms and institutions in place — from long-term personal ties to physical communication links to agreed norms and rules of engagement for crises and risky situations — that help provide a moderating or return-to-stable-equilibrium function.