Critique of rabid cold war thinking on US-China relations
From:
"Josie Setzler josiesetzler@PROTECTED [Northwest Ohio Peace Coalition]" <peacelist@PROTECTED>
Date:
April 11th 2024
I heartily recommend the following post for its criticism of a recent article in Foreign Affairs:
By Arnaud Bertrand @Rnaudbertrand on X
This is the most insane article on US-China relations of the year so far, and by a VERY long mile: foreignaffairs.com/united-states/
The 2 authors, the infamous Matt Pottinger (former Deputy National Security Adviser) and Mike Gallagher (former chair of the "House Select Committee on the CCP"), argue that "the United States shouldn’t manage the competition with China; it should win it". What does that even mean, you ask?
To them winning is:
1) "China’s communist rulers would give up trying to prevail in a hot or cold conflict with the United States and its friends"... Last I checked it's not China that has the U.S. surrounded with military bases... What this means concretely is that they want a defanged China that would be militarily and diplomatically submissive to the U.S.
2) "The Chinese people would find inspiration to explore new models of development and governance that don’t rely on repression at home and compulsive hostility abroad". In other words, they want regime change. And in case anyone wasn't clear on this, they straight up write this later in the article: "Washington should not fear the end state desired by a growing number of Chinese: a China that is able to chart its own course free from communist dictatorship." So pretty damn clear that's what they seek... The accusation of "compulsive hostility abroad" for China is also particularly rich coming from the U.S., when one has been constantly at war for decades and the other hasn't fought a single war in 45 years...
And how do they plan to achieve this? That's where things get totally insane. Here's a list of measures they advocate.
1) Dramatically increase the size of the US military industrial complex: "Instead of spending about 3 percent of GDP on defense, Washington should spend 4 or even 5 percent". As if it wasn't already large enough with the U.S. defense budget equal to that of the next 11 countries put together (including China)... The typical American answer to any challenge: more bombs... Akin to saying more guns is the answer to mass shootings.
2) Becoming systematically confrontational vs China: "Washington will need to adopt rhetoric and policies that [will] feel uncomfortably confrontational", because "rising tensions are inevitable in the short run if the United States is to [...] win the contest in the long run".
3) Ensuring the whole of Asia is under U.S. military domination: "[the U.S. should launch a] generational effort directed by the president to restore U.S. primacy in Asia", which means multiplying "U.S. military installations across the region and pre-position critical supplies such as fuel, ammunition, and equipment throughout the Pacific."
4) "Severing China’s access to Western technology"
5) "Tearing down the 'Great Firewall' of China" in order to "disseminate truthful information within China". "Truthful information" being of course defined as inciting civil war within the country to foment regime change...
6) Openly declare the contest a "cold war", because "U.S. policymakers’ squeamishness about the term 'cold war' causes them to overlook the way it can mobilize society. A cold war offers a relatable framework that Americans can use to guide their own decisions."
And to top it all off, it's all justified by a crazy amount of ridiculous fake news.
For instance they offer as a proof of China's "hostility" the assertion that "Beijing exploited the [October 7th] attack by serving up endless anti-Israeli and anti-American propaganda through TikTok, whose algorithms are subject to control by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)". Which is of course 100% false and actually immensely insulting to Americans, as if being outraged by genocide and their own country's complicity in it was a "communist plot"...
They also hilariously spend a considerable amount of the article's real estate bashing the U.S.'s era of "détente" with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, calling it "discredited". All presumably to make it very clear that not only do they want a cold war with China, but they want the version of it when tensions with the USSR were at their highest... So appealing!
I wouldn't spend time writing this up if this hadn't been written by folks who sadly represent a very influential - and rabidly sinophobic - current in US politics.
At the risk of stating the obvious, this is all utterly delusional. The US cannot regime change China, and they'll never be able to "defang" China to make it militarily submissive to them. Heck, you just need to look at the outcome of the first cold war: is Russia "defanged"?
The only possible outcome here, and it's high time these folks face reality, is peaceful coexistence. Which means that pursuing all this, the dramatic expansion of the US military industrial complex and all the rest, is a fool's errand and a waste of money that's very much not in America's interests.
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