If U.S. policies were so successful, why did the Obama administration have to send more troops to Europe to reassure America’s prosperous but poorly … - Stephen Walt

Deng Xiaopeng's “Four Modernizations” began the process of unleashing China's enormous potential, but the United States consciously aided its ascent, based on the hope that doing so would hasten its transition to democracy, turn Beijing into a “responsible stakeholder,” and bind it so tightly within U.S.-led institutions that future conflicts would be easy to manage. One is hard-pressed to think of another case where an overwhelmingly dominant great power deliberately facilitated the rise of the only country that could possibly pose a serious challenge to its privileged position.

It is obvious that this approach failed, which is why U.S. leaders now worry about unfavorable power trends in Asia and are actively trying to build a balancing coalition to contain Chinese power. I share their concerns and agree with this prescription (and said so in the book), yet Gavin apparently regards the policies that led to this worrisome situation as a great success. They surely were for China—but not for the United States.

I present a different set of counterfactuals in the book (and a few other places), suggesting that adopting offshore balancing in the 1990s would have 1) led to better (though not perfect) relations with Russia; 2) made the 9/11 attacks much less likely to happen;