The Socio-Psychological Dimension of U.S. Strategic Attitudes toward China

• In Event: Poster Session: Gender and Comparative and International Politics & International Relations Theory
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: International Relations Theory

Abstract

How do social cohesion and fragmentation within American society, as well as U.S. anxiety toward China, shape Washington’s changing strategic attitudes towards Beijing? Historians have pointed out that a permanent state of anxiety about China shapes U.S. understandings and intentions toward the country, alternating periods in which such preoccupation for the Asian country is more acutely felt than others. This project operationalizes anxiety in terms of the decision-makers’ perceived uncertainty about China’s role, actions, intentions, and/or future strategic directions. In IR, social cohesion and fragmentation are understood in relation to the strength of ties that bind individuals and groups to a given society. Drawing on the diversionary foreign policy literature and prospect theory, leaders and decision-makers will tend to be more risk-prone in their foreign policy behavior: seeking to increase social cohesion, they display overconfidence and a more reckless attitude when dealing with external actors or threats. On the other hand, when fragmentation is absent they will tend to behave in a more predictable and conservative manner in the foreign policy realm. Combining low/high levels of anxiety and presence/absence of social cohesion, I advance four typological strategic attitudes attached to instances of U.S.-China diplomatic interactions occurred throughout modern history: strategic empathy, strategic altruism, strategic skepticism, strategic narcissism.

Author

• Giuseppe Paparella, LSE