THE COOL WAR BETWEEN CHINA AND THE UNITED STATES

Noah Feldman, Cool War: The Future of Global Competition (New York: Random House, 2013) ('The term cool war aims to capture two different, mutually contradictory historical developments that are taking place simultaneously. A classic struggle for power is unfolding at the same time as economic cooperation is becoming deeper and more fundamental." Id. at xii. "Whatever its status may be in Europe, nationalism is alive and well in China in particular and in Asia more broadly. It is also present in the United States, especially in relation to China. However irrational it may be on the surface, nationalism is an important and growing part of why China and the United States are finding themselves in a cool war." "For nearly two hundred years, nationalism has been the single most durable, effective legitimating force for governments and movements around the world. Nationalism is born out of confrontation. The nation must always define itself in contrast to other groupings that do not share its ethnicity, language, or state." Id. at 32. "The September 11 attacks generated a security-oriented nationalism that supported the wars of Afghanistan and Iraq." Id. at 33. "The global recession and the simultaneous rise of China have changed the situation. China has become a target, blamed for artificially depressing its currency and increasing the U.S. trade deficit, Impetus to protect U.S. industry from defeat at the hands of one-side competition is growing, Barack Obama's bailout of the U.S. automakers belonged to the realm of economic policy, but it was economic policy powerfully informed by a sense of national pride." Id. at 34. "The debate in China about the uses of law reflects an important fact about the development of the rule of law that is often forgotten or misunderstood in the West. In established legal systems, people sometimes imagine that law is a tool of the weak, used to restrain the strong. But that is not the way law comes into existence. Laws are made initially by the powerful, who agree to be constrained by legal rules in exchange for a similar agreement by those with less power. The result is a greater uniformity of conduct, greater predictability, and less effort needed to monitor and enforce what everyone in the system is doing. On top of it all, the powerful are able to legitimate their position by conforming to  rules that they have set to their own advantage. If the legal rules are not to their liking, powerful actors can usually change them." Id. at 42-43.).