Harry Targ
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.
