The deal offered benefits not only to England, France, and the Allies, but also to Japan and Germany that they couldn’t have even hoped to achieve had they won the war. 6
6 Apparently Germany and Japan would have found it to be unbelievable. “The primary reason Germany and Japan had launched World War II in the first place was to gain greater access to resources and markets. Germany wanted the agricultural output of Poland, the capital of the Low Countries, the coal of Central Europe, and the markets of France. Japan coveted the manpower and markets of China and the resources of Southeast Asia. Now that they had been thoroughly defeated, the Americans were offering them economic access far beyond their wildest prewar longings: risk-free access to ample resources and bottomless markets a half a world away. And “all” it would cost them was accepting a security guarantee that was better than anything they could ever have achieved by themselves.”
It seems to me there are positional status questions—is China just a participant in America’s world, or is it the Middle Kingdom?--but I think it’s hard to see a situation where China is better off annexing countries to be recalcitrant provinces rather than just trading with them while they’re American allies and protectorates. (Like, it’s really not obvious that China is better off with a conquered Korea than it is with a neighboring Korea.)
Re trade vs conquest—If smart people are in charge of a smart populace, I agree. But China’s South China Sea colonialism + attitude toward Taiwan suggest that they aren’t viewing things solely in those terms. They act like a people who find terminal value in throwing their weight around and in taking Taiwan, or at least in reducing the influence of the U.S.-Japan alliance in the area by doing those things.
Re your example of Bretton Woods—in an analogous situation, the U.S./world order would be ready to give China great trade terms, but China would not even perceive such terms to be possible—wouldn’t that give China an incentive to conquer instead of trade, as the Axis powers did? I am probably misinterpreting your point here. (Does China want more access to U.S./world markets than it already has?)
Consider this claim from a recent SSC book review contest entrant, describing the Bretton Woods arrangement:
It seems to me there are positional status questions—is China just a participant in America’s world, or is it the Middle Kingdom?--but I think it’s hard to see a situation where China is better off annexing countries to be recalcitrant provinces rather than just trading with them while they’re American allies and protectorates. (Like, it’s really not obvious that China is better off with a conquered Korea than it is with a neighboring Korea.)
Re trade vs conquest—If smart people are in charge of a smart populace, I agree. But China’s South China Sea colonialism + attitude toward Taiwan suggest that they aren’t viewing things solely in those terms. They act like a people who find terminal value in throwing their weight around and in taking Taiwan, or at least in reducing the influence of the U.S.-Japan alliance in the area by doing those things.
Re your example of Bretton Woods—in an analogous situation, the U.S./world order would be ready to give China great trade terms, but China would not even perceive such terms to be possible—wouldn’t that give China an incentive to conquer instead of trade, as the Axis powers did? I am probably misinterpreting your point here. (Does China want more access to U.S./world markets than it already has?)