US Should Stop Rattling Sabers with China

By JASON SIBERT

The Trump Administration appears determined to move the geopolitical struggle against the People’s Republic of China into the military realm.

At the same time it will cost our country lots of money in conventional and nuclear arms. The administration’s foreign policy is patterned after the Cold War against Soviet Russia, a state that imploded in 1991. In a recent speech, US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien compared Chinese President Xi Jinping to former Soviet Dictator Joseph Stalin.

“Let us be clear, the Chinese Communist Party is a Marxist/Leninist organization,” said O’Brien. “The party General Secretary Xi Jinping sees himself as Joseph Stalin’s successor.”

Just a month later, US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo gave a speech about Xi that President Harry Truman could have delivered about Stalin. He referred to Xi Jinping as a “true believer in a bankrupt totalitarian ideology.” He added that Xi’s ideology “informs his decades-long desire for global hegemony of Chinese Communism.”

The United States and PRC are geopolitical competitors. However, comparing the country to the old Soviet Union is a false analogy. The Chinese Communist Party today manages an economy that is much more market-oriented than the Soviet economy throughout most of the Cold War, as stated by writer Michael McFall in his story “Xi Jinping is not Stalin” in Foreign Affairs. Also, Stalin orchestrated a takeover of Eastern Europe after World War II and openly called for a world modeled on the Soviet system. The PRC does nothing of the sort, as the country has not overthrown a single government. It has meddled in the affairs of Hong Kong and spends money promoting ideas that support authoritarianism and militate against the idea of a democratic republic, as the PRC has promoted an authoritarian mode of politics and economic development and not a specific political system.

Over 100,000 Americans died in the Cold War struggle between the US and Soviet Russia, even though the world was luckily spared a shooting war between the Soviets and the US. On a worldwide scale, 20 million people died in the struggle between the two superpowers. Equating the PRC with Soviet Russia could lead to a rerun. However, there is a better way. We could move the contest between authoritarianism and democracy out of the military realm. This would keep us from spending millions on nuclear arms, conventional weapons, and space weapons.

McFall’s story promoted a relevant strategy for managing China. The US should swear off a direct confrontation with PRC as well as proxy wars, or wars where we support one side and the PRC supports the other in hopes of gaining influence. Our country should also resist the temptation to check every Chinese move around the world. McFall correctly pointed out that freedom and democracy are not under assault if Rwanda imports Chinese technology. Such geopolitical moves often spark condemnation from those who want a more robust strategy against the PRC.

The US should concentrate on being a better example of the democratic promise by investing in education, healthcare, and research and development, those things played a role in our victory in the Cold War, as stated by McFall. Productive arms control could turn the conflict to the non-military realm.

China increased its military budget by 6.6% last year and the US currently spends at Cold War levels on its military. To move our country on a different course, the US needs to avoid the language outlined in the early part of this story. Chinese writer Tong Zhao addressed the need for arms control in his story “Managing the Sino-American Dispute of Missile Defense” for WarOnTheRocks.com. Zhao said the Trump Administration’s withdrawal from a number of arms control treaties – just like the George W. Bush Administration’s withdraw from arms control treaties — makes the US a less than credible partner. He also correctly stated that the US must adopt a more internationalist mindset and convince the Chinese that it can be a credible arms control partner by agreeing that arms control can be beneficial for both countries.

The PRC fears the US missile defense system. It feels that the US missile defense system is overbuilt and is designed to deal with more than just the North Korean threat and poses a threat to its own offensive missile capabilities. Zhao suggested our two countries work together and conduct a missile defense system to protect the world from North Korea and take the emphasis off of China. The US and China should then move into an arms control framework where both countries subject their won missile defense systems to a drawdown.

Zhao said that a willingness by the US to engage in the issue of missile defense could pave the way for a Chinese drawdown on nuclear modernization. Then our country should drawdown the current modernization plan started under President Barack Obama and continued under Trump. While Zhao feels numerical reductions in the numbers of nuclear weapons of both the US and China might not be possible in the near term, they would be on the table in the long term if we start talks on missile defense.

The alternative is an accelerating arms race, distrust between the PRC and the US, and more bloated military budgets in a country that needs investment in infrastructure, carbon-free energy, and healthcare.

Jason Sibert is the executive director of the Peace Economy Project in St. Louis, Mo.

From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2020

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