Why the rising China needs alliances

Alliances remain at the heart of history, since they serve states in achieving geopolitical needs and securing grand strategic necessities. Apart from strategic considerations, the article aspires to highlight the psychological motivation for conceiving and forming alliances. It argues alliances to be the basic instrument in ensuring survival and elaborates the psychological efficacy and utility in employing the same device in gaining and sustaining the status of a functional great power. This article addresses the most significant development in modern times, i.e. rising China and its pursuit to become a pro-active great power, whilst greatly drawing from its strategic history in such endeavours. It explores the ‘China Threat’, and argues that China is likely to enter into alliances based on its geopolitical necessities by engaging its armed forces regionally, most likely in its near abroad. The article interprets China’s Belt and Road Initiative as a soft alliance and predicts the precursors of a military alliance.