The Perils of Bipolarity: Subnational Conflict and the Rise Of China - Nuclear Weapons, Sino-U.S. Proxy Conflict in Africa, Examples of Cold War Proxy Conflicts, Rise of China and Regional Control

Professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction, this unique study examines whether subnational conflict will rise once more as the U.S. engages in proxy conflicts with China over resource access in Africa. These conflicts will place great demands on all US instruments of power, as involvement in counterinsurgency operations in Africa trends upward. Bipolarity and renewed proxy conflict will require rethinking of long-term national and military strategies focused primarily on large-scale interstate wars; this will impact defense acquisition and military doctrine as US strategic focus shifts from conventional conflict to counterinsurgency operations.

This paper is arranged as follows: Section Two defines subnational and proxy conflicts and explains why nuclear powers in a bipolar system make strategic policy choices to compete by proxy over contentious issues. It reviews the historical record of subnational proxy conflict conducted by both by the US and USSR from 1946 through the end of the Cold War era. The next section discusses the rationale for my claim that China will soon be poised to challenge the US within a new bipolar order, with a concomitant increase of proxy conflicts between the two. Section Four reviews the implications for US grand and military strategies, as well as for defense acquisition programs and development of future doctrine to meet this new order. The concluding section discusses recommendations for strategic planning over the next several decades.

The modern international system in which states compete for survival has historically assumed three primary configurations: unipolarity, in which a single state acts as a hegemon; bipolarity, in which two states control the majority of power with weaker states aligning with one or the other; and multipolarity, where three or more nations are powerful enough to act as poles in the system. Since the 1648 Treaties of Westphalia multipolarity has been the norm, in which great power states jockeyed for power on the European continent. While the fortunes of these powers have waxed and waned, war has typically been the ultimate result of perceived power imbalances among them. While there have been historical instances of bipolarity; each of these was regional rather than global in scope. When the US and USSR emerged from World War II as the two sole remaining great powers, the international system assumed a bipolar status for the first time and remained so until 1991, when the USSR disintegrated.