As part of our effort to highlight the work of Anderson students and alumni, the author has agreed to share the following piece from an assignment on American foreign policy. In this piece from last fall, recent graduate Ryan Daugherty argues for the U.S. to take a moderate stance towards the island dispute between China and Japan.
The U.S. Role in the Senkaku/Diaoyu Dispute
Ryan Daugherty
The United States is in a very similar role that the United Kingdom was in over a hundred years ago. In this time, the UK saw its power overall falling and the rising powers of the United States and Germany. The UK went two different routes in how it accommodated the rise of new powers while it was still the overall dominant power. With the United States, the UK embraced and worked with the United States to behave as a world power should and the US over time took over many of the same roles that the United Kingdom had previously played. With Germany it was a different story. The UK and allies such as France tried to block and stymie the rise of Germany and this eventually led to the two World Wars. In a sense this is the role the United States is in now. While the United States is now an overall declining power but is losing relative power because of the rise of many other nations, it must find a way to accommodate the rise of many new powers to the world stage and China is the most important of those rising powers.