Abstract The growth of China into an equal economic power to the United States has produced the bipolar disorder of paranoia about triggering the Thucydides Trap. As both superpowers envisaged coexistence in the nuclear age to take the form of a Yalta-type division of the world into spheres of influence, they are racing to expand their spheres of influence before the eventual negotiations to define the boundaries of these spheres and buffer zones. This rush to regional consolidation is dismantling the international architecture to manage multilateral trade, contain contagious diseases, undertake peacekeeping, and protect the natural environment. U.S.–China tension is spiraling upward because of the vicious cycle generated by the interaction of three kinds of U.S.–China competition: geostrategic, technology and trade. The United States and China could end this vicious cycle by decoupling geo-strategic competition from the others with an arms-control agreement and by decoupling technological and trade competition with a World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement on unfair industrial policy practices. Unfortunately, the level of mutual trust is too low to enable successful negotiations on these two agreements. The upward drift in U.S.–China tension is increasing collateral damage on the rest of the world. For example, there is increased fragility in the supply chains and reduced benefits from the trade restrictions on goods from countries in other spheres of influence. Additionally, the sovereignty of these countries is diminished by the leaders of the spheres. The best outcome for a country is to be nonpartisan and trade with every sphere of influence. Neutrality, however, is not achieved through self-declaration but through recognition by the superpowers. A country is more likely to be accorded neutral status if it is a member of a neutrality coalition that can project collective force that matches those of the superpowers. As the superpowers would be vigilant in preventing the formation of this strong neutrality coalition in the first place, such a coalition must be formed relatively quickly, which means that the number of founding members must be small. Furthermore, to soothe the discomfort of the superpowers, this coalition must have members that have close ties with the United States, and some members with good relations with China. The “Rest of the West” (consisting of the 27 members of the European Union, UK, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand) and ASEAN should form the Atlantic-Pacific Sustainability Partnership (APSP) to maintain multilateral free trade, uphold the United Nations principles of peace and human rights, and protect global ecosystems, with the rich APSP members assisting the development and green transformation of poor APSP members. As the collective GDP of APSP will be significantly larger than that of the United States and China in a decade from now, both superpowers would have an increasing incentive to join APSP to seek alliance against the other. If one joins, the other would quickly follow to avoid inevitable defeat from self-isolation. When this happens, APSP would have crowded out the U.S.-China Cold War.
Wing Thye Woo (Fri,) studied this question.