Top thinker says China may 'push the US out of Asia'

ONE of the US's leading strategic thinkers has warned Australia that over the next 30 years, China would seek to dominate Asia.

ONE of the US's leading strategic thinkers has warned Australia that over the next 30 years, China would seek to dominate Asia.

The warning came from John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, who said China's rise would not be peaceful.

At the same time, Professor Mearsheimer said the US faced defeat on its four main challenges in the wider Middle East -- he predicted it would fail in Afghanistan and Iraq, that Iran would acquire nuclear weapons and there would be no "two-state" solution for Israel and the Palestinians.

"If China grows in the next 30 years as it has over the last 30 years, it will seek to dominate Asia the way America dominates the western hemisphere," the professor said at Sydney University.

"If China turns into a greater Hong Kong, it will try to push the United States out of Asia and develop its own Munroe Doctrine" -- a reference to US hegemonic assertion in the Americas.

"I think that China cannot rise peacefully and that this is largely pre-determined."

A foreign policy realist, Professor Mearsheimer opposed the Iraq war, is a fierce critic of the Israeli lobby in the US and a sceptic about American decline. He will deliver the annual Michael Hintze Lecture at Sydney University tomorrow. His host, Sydney University's Alan Dupont, described Professor Mearsheimer as "America's boldest and perhaps most controversial thinker in the field of international relations".

Professor Mearsheimer believes the US and its Asian allies, including Australia, will follow a strategy of "containment" and of "balancing" China in Asia. He says there is no difference between these concepts -- thus dismissing the formula that underpins Australia's policy towards China.

Professor Mearsheimer says that containment of China "is desirable from an American point of view". On Australia's potential conflict as a US ally and China's economic partner, he predicted we would develop closer economic ties with China but support the US to contain China's power.

The presence of nuclear weapons, he argued, meant there would be "no shooting war" between the US and China.

"I think in Afghanistan and Iraq, America will be seen to lose both wars," he said. It was inevitable that American withdrawal "would leave a mess behind" in both countries. In the northern autumn last year, "it was clear Afghanistan was not a winnable war yet President (Barack) Obama upped the ante".

Professor Mearsheimer said there was "no sign" of a two-state solution in the Middle East. The alternative of a Greater Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu's real policy, risked the future of Israel as a state: "Most Americans and most American Jews do not appreciate how much trouble Israel is in.

"I am in favour of a much more prudent US," he said. "I think it important that the US retain its primacy." That meant grasping the limits to military power, avoiding invasions of Arab and Islamic nations and moving to balance the rise of China.