US–China Strategic Competition: Through the Matrix of Complex Interdependence

Abstract

Indo-Pacific region has been a great testing ground for analysing the politico-economic and geo-strategic dynamics of the great powers’ competition. Since the early 1990s, China and the US have had constant sporadic contestations about their control over the Western Pacific. The end of the Cold War has seen the Indo-Pacific gradually emerge as the epicentre of their strategic pursuits. Attempting to elucidate underpinning theoretical debates of this competition, this study revolves around various evolving push and pull factors undergirding the dynamics of this region where all global as well as regional powers have remained trapped in their ever-expanding complex interdependence. The fact that the Indo-Pacific has also gained spotlight due to its increasing economic significance has increased the US–China competition and consequently drastically altered its geo-strategic and security dynamics as well. This chapter contends that in spite of their expanding complex economic interdependence, it is the clash of geopolitical interests of the two “great powers” that has driven this perpetual politico-economic insecurity across this region. While the US has sought to persistently defend mechanisms that explain and legitimise its sole “superpower” status, China being a revisionist state, has striven hard to evolve an alternate “balance of power” that the US sees as a challenge to its global dominance. The US, therefore, has been reviving its time-tested hub-and-spokes security architecture and cultivating new friends where India has come to be its new strategic partner for countering rising China. The chapter shows how, in the short term, a clash between the US and China is less likely as quintessential China will continue to avoid directly confronting the US pre-eminence unless its defined “redlines” or core interests are threatened. The two sides therefore will continue with their off-again-on-again interactions to manage their trust deficit and to carve out a sustainable future for themselves.