An American foreign policy expert argues China does not respect and cannot be expected to respect international law, and that the three decades-old U.S. policy of trying to convince China to become a stakeholder in the liberal international order has failed.

The results of these foreign policy failures, said Seth Cropsey, a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute and Director of its Center for American Seapower, is an unduly assertive China that pushes its weight around because it views the U.S. as an effete pushover afraid to confront it on the battlefield.

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"U.S. policy toward China has failed spectacularly," asserts Cropsey. "China's actions show that it sees us as a strategic competitor."

On the other hand, the U.S. persists in the dangerous illusion China "is a large market that can be cajoled into joining us as a defender of international security and economic stability," said Cropsey.

"China does not respect international law."

In an indirect repudiation of President Barack Obama's weakness or unwillingness to challenge China, Cropsey said the next U.S. President needs to understand that "our fate as a great power is inseparable from America's continued role as a great Pacific power."

Cropsey, however, said this doesn't mean aggressive policies or military confrontation. What it does mean is the next President must engage in active diplomacy with countries on China's periphery that fear its hegemony.

Cropsey said the next President must also ensure the U.S. has the "credible combat power to foreshorten China's mis-behavior and militarized ambitions, including consistent, reliable and frequent U.S. Navy freedom of navigation operations in the international waters of the South China Sea."

No less important, this rebuilding of the U.S.' long-neglected combat power means increasing the U.S. naval advantage over China "by building substantially more attack submarines, and exploiting this asymmetric advantage by deploying them to the South and East China Seas."

Communist China's world view is predicated on exploiting to the hilt the advantages conferred on it by its massive economic and military power. That view is expressed through unrelenting strategic bullying of Asian nations withstanding its demands in the South China Sea.

Cropsey said China's big bully mindset was illustrated when China's previous foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, told other Asian senior officials in 2010 that, "China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's a fact."

He said China's brand of exceptionalism reinforces Yang's blunt assertion that might makes right. China's exceptionalism, according to Cropsey, "lies neither in adherence to principle, nor to law, nor accepted norms of international behavior, but rather in deflection from these."

Cropsey was a U.S. Navy officer and deputy Undersecretary of the Navy in the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations.

TagsSeth Cropsey, Hudson Institute, Center for American Seapower, china, United States, seapower, U.S. Navy