Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China

by Hal Brands

By the late nineteenth century, no combination of countries in the Western Hemisphere could meaningfully threaten America’s security. The one European power—Britain—that might have challenged the United States in its own backyard was menaced by Germany and chose to appease the Americans instead.9 The United States was the sole great power in its hemisphere, which allowed it to project that power around the world. America could build an ocean-going navy rather than heavily fortifying its frontiers. It could enter the world wars of the twentieth century late and allow countries in Europe and Asia to bear the brunt of the fighting and dying. And because the United States was so far away from Europe and Asia, the countries of those regions were less likely to fear being conquered by America than to try to enlist it as an ally against predators closer to home. This was what the countries of Western Europe did in dragging the United States into NATO in the 1940s. It was what China itself did in the 1970s: Mao explained his pivot to America as a way of using the “far barbarians” to keep the “near barbarians” in check.10 By dint of not being located in the Old World, the United States found itself invited to exercise vast influence there.