The United States and China in Power Transition - Strategic Studies ...

pricious relations. Both understand the inherent danger
of this power transition and agree to take careful
measures to manage this process.
The bottom line is that neither the United States
nor China wants war, yet there are conditions under
which the two sides can be pushed over the edge to
fight even if they do not want to. The Taiwan issue,
as the Chinese rightly put it, is the most difficult one
in U.S.-China relations. The Chinese insist that China
cannot become a true great power without completing
its mission of national unity; and the most outstanding
piece is Taiwan. The Chinese certainly hold that
U.S. involvement in the Taiwan issue in general, and
the arms sales in particular, are the main obstacles in
China’s mission. In many ways, one can argue that the
settlement of the Taiwan issue is also the time when
the United States and China can come to terms with
the power transition business. If the U.S.-China power
transition “catches fire,” the trigger will most likely be
the Taiwan issue.
As the power transition unfolds, there will be new
problems. Of note is that by the second half of the next
30 years, there will be new dynamic in the two nations’
relations, driven primarily by the changing power balance
between the two. The United States should take
Organski’s observation below seriously.
It might be expected that a wise challenger, growing
in power through internal development, would wait
to threaten the existing international order until it was
as powerful as the dominant nation and its allies, for
surely it would seem foolish to attack while weaker
than the enemy. If this expectation were correct, the
risk of war would be greatest when the two opposing
camps were almost exactly equal in power, and if war
broke out before this point, it would take the form of
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