Relations between Japan and China have deteriorated steadily since 2012, when the disagreement over who owns some small islands in the East China Sea moved to the front of their bilateral agenda. China made nearly 200 incursions into territorial waters around the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in 2013, “compared to two in 2011 and none in 2010.” Japanese fighter jets scrambled a record of over 300 times in the area last year. This is dangerously dry tinder for escalation between a key U.S. ally and a nuclear-armed, rising China. U.S. diplomats have struggled to balance their neutrality in the dispute over the islands’ ownership, with a strategy to protect U.S. interests that combines reassuring Japan and deterring China. But Washington’s analysis of the issue misses a core challenge in Japanese-Chinese relations that increases the risk of conflict: a fairness dilemma.
Many U.S. policy makers view the rising Japanese-Chinese tensions through the lens of a security dilemma between the two countries, where each side’s fear of the other side’s capabilities and uncertain intentions leads to countermeasures that feed a vicious cycle. Policies to address a security dilemma include reassuring allies, while reducing uncertainty through transparency and clear deterrence. Reducing this fear is necessary, but insufficient in this case.
A realistic view of human decision making describes another fundamental driver of potential tragedy in East Asia: fairness. Some think fairness and justice “ought” to matter for moral or religious reasons. But modern biology tells us that rejecting unfairness is a deep-rooted biological drive, for which humans are prepared to pay large costs—fairness “is,” not just “ought” to be, a practical policy challenge.
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