Barring an internal crisis, China will have substantial superiority in power over other Asian states. Thus, strategies aimed at balancing it will be collective rather than unilateral or bilateral, and even the United States will seek partners to reduce the associated risks and costs. Pressing U.S. domestic needs—outmoded infrastructure, long-neglected social problems, the rising costs of health and retirement programs, budget deficits and debt, and the increasing proportion of retirees—are likely to reduce the revenues and reservoir of public support American leaders require to sustain expensive overseas defense commitments. Thus, a diminution in the American commitment appears likely, the current clamor about a pivot to Asia notwithstanding.

The most effective collective strategy for states seeking to counterbalance China would be to extend Chinese focus and resources across several fronts. Given China’s size, these fronts are widely separated and hence hard to reinforce. Simple geography suggests that the natural partners will be the United States, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia, Singapore and India. Yet apart from the difficulties of orchestrating such a disparate coalition, its members’ varying degrees of economic dependence on China and exposure to its military power will complicate cohesion and collective action.

Still, security consultations among these states have increased, and some (India, Japan, Australia and Singapore) have engaged in joint naval exercises. China’s rise has initiated a strategic convergence between India and the United States—a stark contrast to the Cold War years—and their 2008 agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation was a landmark. That deal constituted, in effect, America’s recognition of India as a nuclear-weapons state—a major departure from Washington’s traditional nonproliferation policy. Yet talk of a U.S.-Indian alliance is misplaced. India will seek the material and symbolic gains that flow from a partnership with Washington but without losing its leverage or alarming China. Given China’s proximity to India and its growing power, the risks of joining an overtly anti-Chinese alliance would outweigh any gains. This same logic will guide Vietnam.

Japan will face the toughest choices. The prevailing view among Japan experts is that it will not jettison its military minimalism for various reasons—public opposition, a quasi-pacifist culture, constitutional barriers, confidence in the American alliance and regional memories of Japanese militarism. Yet over the past three hundred years Japan’s foreign policy has ranged from isolationism to imperialism, with variations in between, and changes in its external environment have often forced these fluctuations. Furthermore, Japan’s choices are not limited to inertia or imperialism. It now spends a tiny proportion of its GDP on defense and could improve its military capabilities modestly without provoking panic. Moreover, depending on how China wields its power, regional attitudes could change, especially if Japan increases its military strength in tandem with a multilateral strategy and resolves its territorial squabbles with South Korea (over the Takeshima/Dokdo island groups) and Russia (concerning the South Kurils/Hoppo Ryodo).

Some states will stand apart from an anti-Chinese coalition. They include South Korea, as long as China does not pose a threat and remains North Korea’s principal patron. Russia will follow suit. Its vast Far Eastern provinces—almost three times the area of France, Germany and Spain combined—are sparsely populated (just over six million, 4.2 percent of Russia’s total population), far from Russia’s western industrial heartland (Moscow is five thousand miles away) and hence hard to support militarily. This is particularly true given that the four Chinese provinces across the border (Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, Jilin and Liaoning) alone contain about 160 million people. Russia’s relative weakness will give China a secure northern front and reduce any encirclement strategy’s efficacy. Mongolia—weak, exposed to Chinese power and lacking nearby allies—will respond similarly, while Laos and Cambodia will rely on China to balance Vietnam. For its part, Beijing will counter any encirclement strategy by preserving and extending interior lines of supply for energy and trade that connect it to Russia, Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. It will also seek access to ports on the coasts of Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Iran, so as to have supplements to the Straits of Malacca, Sunda and Lombok. China also will insist that any deal over the unification of the Korean Peninsula, which will require its participation, involve the removal of or a sharp reduction in American forces now stationed in South Korea.

On Greater Asia’s western flank, China will replace Russia as the state most consequential for Central Asian states’ economies and national security. But this transition will unfold as much of Central Asia resumes its cultural trajectory southward, toward the wider Islamic world, a process interrupted by the nineteenth-century czarist conquest. In deepening its presence in Central Asia and Afghanistan, China will have to navigate cultural and religious currents that could flow into Xinjiang. Another challenge will be to safeguard its economic investments and security interests without provoking a backlash or becoming mired in conflicts in what promises to be a volatile area. That balancing act will be even harder should China experience a political crisis that makes distant Xinjiang harder to control, precisely at a time when the province is exposed to destabilizing influences.

China’s biggest problem in Greater Asia’s western theater would be Pakistan’s fragmentation, which would undermine the most important element of China’s outflanking strategy against India and trigger upheavals with follow-on effects that could flow into China’s westernmost provinces. Pakistan’s breakup would be even more dangerous for India, Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Each has borders and cultural and ethnoreligious connections with Pakistan, which would ensure that its problems would be theirs, too. India’s leaders, having long focused on Pakistan’s strength, would face new circumstances that are harder to comprehend, let alone counter, above all preserving nuclear deterrence with an adversary lacking a functioning state. Five other problems could surface or become more difficult to manage were Pakistan to unravel. One is irredentism, given that the Pashtun homeland straddles Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Baluch territories traverse Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. The second concerns groups that couple terrorism and radical Islam, which would find it much easier to operate in Kashmir and Afghanistan in the absence of a strong Pakistani state. The third is the management of crucial water resources shared by India and Pakistan, and by Pakistan and Afghanistan, in ways that do not pit upstream states against their downstream neighbors. Fourth is the prospect that transnational drug and criminal networks spanning Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central Asia and Iran could be strengthened. The fifth would be ensuring Afghanistan’s stability amid upheaval in Pakistan.

Another challenge on Greater Asia’s western flank involves stabilizing post-American Afghanistan. What looms is freewheeling competition—featuring India, Pakistan, China, Iran and Uzbekistan—powered by fear and mistrust and without robust regional organizations that could foster collective action. Worse, as part of their rivalry, these states are likely to establish patron-client relationships with armed Afghan groups, making order in Afghanistan even harder to preserve. None of these states stands to gain from worsening turmoil in Afghanistan, yet each is acting in ways that increase its likelihood.

WOULD THAT one of the three prevailing megatheories offered a reliable guide to Greater Asia’s future. Alas, with so many forces at play in the region, tidy frameworks are useless. Greater Asia is like a big bus crammed with passengers of varying backgrounds and persuasions. Some are more important than others and can take a turn steering. But this bus has several steering wheels and no consensus on a common course, least of all among the drivers, who also lack maps and don’t trust one another enough to select a route or destination. Some vehicle parts are old and unreliable; others have yet to encounter rough terrain. And a thick fog obscures the road.

A likely consequence of the divergent interests among Greater Asia’s most powerful states and the absence of effective institutions to facilitate collective action is that problems that cannot be addressed effectively without multilateral cooperation will go unattended and fester. These problems include nuclear proliferation, terrorism, environmental degradation, territorial disputes and arms races. Among the desirables that appear infeasible are confidence-building measures that avert crises on land and sea; agreements that enable the cooperative exploration of contested oceanic energy deposits; rule-based management of shared water resources by riverine countries; and codes of conduct on cyberwarfare, trade and investment in a transaction-dense region. The pity is not merely that these challenges are likely to be missed opportunities for cooperation but also that they may aggravate already-abundant sources of tension and conflict resulting from changes in the balance of power. Thucydides would have found these tragic circumstances familiar, but our prevailing paradigms, long on sweep and short on subtlety, cannot do them justice.

Rajan Menon is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science at the City College of New York/City University of New York, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the author, most recently, of The End of Alliances (Oxford University Press, 2007).