Harry Targ
The conservative Republican Indiana Senator recently visited Purdue facilities to observe the university's role in protecting "national security":
The New Cold War With China
The article linked below illustrates how the United
States is launching a campaign to repress Chinese Americans and those who warn
of a US New Cold War with China. Literature on Cold War One recounts how
government spokespersons, corporate media, and institutions of popular culture
and higher education launched a coordinated “red scare,” centering on the
former Soviet Union. It was not an accident that cold-war anti-communism
paralleled efforts to crush movements advocating more progressive political
agendas. The labor movement was a particular target of state repression in the
1950s. As Bloomberg wrote referring to the new Tech Diplomacy Institute at
Purdue, “The Clean
Network’s effort to create a united economic front is to China what George
Kennan’s historic “long telegram” of 1946 was to the Soviet Union.”
Today, new cold war propaganda has been identified by
a NATO document as “cognitive warfare,” that is presenting narratives of the
world that demonize China, demean movements for fundamental global change
organizing in the Global South, and advocate increased militarization of
foreign policy and domestic budgets.
To facilitate this New Cold War think tanks, research institutes,
and universities have mobilized their skills for war while the state targets
Chinese Americans and those who oppose a New Cold War with China:
Higher Education and the New Cold War
Purdue university in 2021 established what is called the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy. Its goal, its website says, is to integrate “technology expertise, Silicon Valley strategies, and foreign policy tools to build the Global Trusted Tech Network of governments, companies, organizations and individuals to accelerate the innovation and adoption of trusted technology and ensure technology advances freedom.” New Purdue president Mung Chiang reported that when he returned to the the university from the State Department as the Science and Technology Adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State, his vision was based on the view that “technology must advance freedom.” And the Krach Institute, named after another State Department operative was created to:
“put the
Purdue Equation, “Transformation to the Power of Trust,” to the test by embarking on a global
campaign to challenge the market dominance of Chinese tech firms through the
Clean Network. The strategy united countries and companies around a commitment
to a set of trust principles in technology adoption, data privacy, and security
practices. In this highly successful strategy, Krach’s team transformed US
diplomacy and created a new model based on trust called Tech-Statecraft by
integrating Silicon Valley strategies with traditional foreign policy tools.
As Bloomberg wrote, “The Clean Network’s effort to create a united
economic front is to China what George Kennan’s historic “long telegram” of
1946 was to the Soviet Union.”
And recently
according to the Taipei Times:
Purdue University is launching a
center to advocate for Taiwan as a trusted partner and encourage US investment
in the nation, former US undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy
and the environment Keith Krach told a news conference in Taipei yesterday
Krach, chairman of the Krach Institute for
Tech Diplomacy at Purdue, first announced plans for the establishment of the
Taiwan Center for Innovation and Prosperity before his arrival in Taiwan on
Wednesday for a four-day visit.\
The center would be a partnership between
public and private sectors in the US and Taiwan to “advocate for Taiwan
internationally and attract more global partners,” the institute said. Purdue
launching center to advocate for Taiwan
Why a New Cold War With China and Should
the US Engage in Cooperation Rather Than Conflict?
Why is United States foreign policy, from Trump to
Biden, returning to a policy hostile to China, perhaps creating a “New Cold
War?” The answer has several parts. First, as Alfred McCoy has described (In
the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US
Global Power, Haymarket Books, 2017), the United States, relatively
speaking, is a declining power. As to economic growth, scientific and
technological developments, productivity, and trade, the US, compared to China
particularly, is experiencing stagnation or decline. China has engaged in
massive global projects in transportation, trade, and scientific advances and
by 2030 based on many measures will advance beyond the US as to Gross Domestic
Product.
According to McCoy, the United States has embarked on
a path to overcome its declining relative economic hegemony by increasingly
investing in military advances: a space force, a new generation of nuclear
weapons, cyber security, biometrics, and maintaining or enhancing a global
military presence particularly in the Pacific (what Obama spokespersons called
“the Asian pivot”). In other words, rather than accommodating to a new
multipolar world in the 21st century, the United States is seeking to
reestablish its global hegemony through military means.
Second, the United States is desperately seeking to
overcome the end of its monopoly on technological advances. In computerization,
transportation, pharmaceuticals, it is challenging Chinese innovations,
claiming that China’s advances are derived not from its domestic creativity but
from “pirating” from United States companies. For example, the prestigious and
influential Council on Foreign Relations issued a report in 2019 entitled “Innovation
and National Security: Keeping Our Edge.” The report warned that “…the United
States risks falling behind its competitors, principally China.” China is
investing significantly in new technologies, CFR claims, which they predict
will make China the biggest inventor by 2030. Also, to achieve this goal they
are “exploiting” the openness of the US by violating intellectual property
rights and spying. Therefore, the CFR concluded, since technological innovation
is linked to economic and military advantage and since US leadership in
technology and science is at risk, the nation must recommit to rebuilding its
scientific prowess.
Third, while the United States is engaged in
efforts at regime change around the world and is using brutal economic
sanctions to starve people into submission (such as in Venezuela, Cuba, Iran
and 36 other countries victimized by economic sanctions), China is increasing
its economic ties to these countries through investments, trade, and
assistance. And China opposes these US policies in international organizations.
In broad terms Chinese policy stands with the majority of countries in the
Global South while the United States seeks to control developments there.
Fourth, although Biden’s foreign policy as well as his predecessors, is designed to recreate a Cold War, with China as the target, a policy also embraced by most Democrats, there is at the same time counter-pressure from sectors of the capitalist class who have ties to the Chinese economy: investment, global supply chains, and financial speculation. Moreover, sectors of Chinese capital own or have substantial control over many US corporations and banks. In addition, the Chinese government controls over $1 trillion of US debt. For these sectors of US capital, economic ties with China remain economically critical. In addition, some writers, such as Jerry Harris, point to the emergence of a “transnational capitalist class” whose interests are not tied to any nation-state (Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy, Clarity Press, 2016).
Consequently, while the trajectory of US policy is
toward a return to cold war, there is some push back by economic and political
elites as well. Although with the emphasis on domestic investments in
technology highlighted in the 2022 National Security document mentioned by
Sanger, it appears the advocates of a New Cold War with China seem to be in
control of US foreign policy. (The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 reflects this
renewed commitment to technological advance in the United States).
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/us/politics/biden-china-russia-national-security.html
Fifth, American domestic politics provide an additional cause of the transformation of US/China policy. The popularity of the Democratic Party and President Biden remain low. Therefore, a classic antidote for politicians experiencing declining popularity is to construct an external enemy, “an other,” which can redirect the attention of the public from their personal troubles. It is this external enemy that becomes the source of domestic problems in political discourse. In this context the President is talking tough with the “enemy” of the United States, and, as former Secretary of State Pompeo suggested, it was about time that the US government gave up illusions about working with China.
Finally, the ideological package of racism, white
supremacy, and American Exceptionalism so prevalent in United States history
resurfaced in dramatic ways in the Trump years and continues today. White
supremacy at home is inextricably connected with American Exceptionalism
abroad. For example, President Theodore Roosevelt in 1910 claimed that the
white race has been critical to civilization. Years later Madeleine
Albright, the Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration (and more
recently President Barack Obama) spoke about the United States as the
“indispensable nation,” a model of economics and politics for the world. For
President Biden, the US stands with “democracy” against the world’s leading
“authoritarians.” This sense of omniscience has been basic to the ideological
justification of United States imperial rule.
Each of these elements, from the changing shape of
economic and military capabilities to political exigencies, to the pathologies
of culture, require a peace and justice movement that stands for peaceful
coexistence, demilitarization, building a world of economic justice, rights of
people to determine their own destiny, and inalterable opposition to
racism, white supremacy, and exceptionalisms of all kinds.
And for scholars and diplomats, the question for now
is whether it is better to work for a world of respect, cooperation,
recognition of multipolarity and multilateralism, or for war with China.
