By Michael T. Klare
June 13, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - America’s pundits and
politicians have largely concluded that a new Cold War
with China -- a period of intense hostility and
competition falling just short of armed combat -- has
started. “Rift Threatens U.S. Cold War Against China,”
as a New York Times headline
put it on May 15th, citing recent clashes over
trade, technology, and responsibility for the spread of
Covid-19. Beijing’s decision to subject Hong Kong to
tough new security laws has only further heightened such
tensions. President Trump promptly
threatened to eliminate that city-state’s special
economic relationship with this country, while imposing
new sanctions on Chinese leaders. Meanwhile, Democrats
and Republicans in Congress are working together to
devise tough anti-Chinese sanctions of their own.
For anyone who can remember the original Cold War,
the latest developments may seem eerily familiar. They
bring to mind what occurred soon after America’s World
War II collaboration with the Soviets collapsed in
acrimony as the Russians became ever more heavy-handed
in their treatment of Eastern Europe. In those days,
distrust only grew, while Washington decided to launch a
global drive to contain and defeat the USSR. We seem to
be approaching such a situation today. Though China and
the U.S. continue to maintain trade, scientific, and
educational ties, the leaders of both countries are
threatening to sever those links and undertake a wide
range of hostile moves.
Admittedly, some of the steps being discussed in
Washington to punish China for its perceived bad
behavior will have little immediate impact on the lives
of Americans. A lot of the threats, in fact, may turn
out to be little more than good old-fashioned chest
thumping. Consider, for instance, the proposal floated
by the top-ranking majority and minority members of the
Senate Armed Services Committee, Oklahoma Republican Jim
Inhofe and Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed, to fund a
multibillion dollar “Pacific Deterrence Initiative”
intended to bolster American forces in Asia. That
effort, they
avowed, will “send a strong signal to the Chinese
Communist Party that the American people are committed
to defending U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific.”
Well, that was easy! All we, the taxpaying citizens
of the United States, need to do in this opening salvo
of a new Cold War is salute Congress as it funnels yet
more billions of dollars to the usual defense
contractors and thereby “send a signal” to Beijing that
we will “defend U.S. interests” somewhere far across the
globe. (Now there’s a moment to wave your American
flag!)
But don’t count on such a moment lasting long, not if
a new Cold War starts in earnest. A quick look back at
the original one should remind us that we’ll all pay a
price of some sort for intensifying hostility towards
China (even if a hot war isn’t the result). Perhaps,
then, it’s none too soon to consider how such a world
would impact you and me.
A Feeble Economic Recovery
For most Americans, the first consequence of an
intensifying Cold War could be a weaker than expected
recovery from the Covid-19 economic meltdown. Anything
that stands in the way of a swift rebound -- and a new
Cold War with China falls into that very category --
would be bad news.
Unlike in the original Cold War, when Washington and
Moscow maintained few economic ties, the U.S. and
Chinese economies remain intertwined, contributing to
the net wealth of both countries and benefiting this
country’s export-oriented industries like agriculture
and civilian aircraft production. Admittedly, such ties
have also harmed blue-collar workers who have watched
their jobs migrate across the Pacific and tech companies
that have seen their intellectual property purloined by
Chinese upstarts. Donald Trump stoked resentments over
just such issues to get himself elected in 2016. Since
then, he’s sought to
disentangle the two economies, claiming we would be
better off on our own. (America first!) As part of this
drive, he’s already imposed stiff tariffs on Chinese
imports and blocked Chinese firms from gaining access to
American technology.
Feel free to argue about whether China has abused
international trade rules, as Trump and his allies have
charged, and whether imposing tariffs (paid for by
American importers and consumers, not Chinese suppliers)
is the best way to address that country’s economic rise.
The key thing to note, however, is that economic growth
in both places had slowed in the wake of Trump’s trade
war even before Covid-19 hit. As 2019 drew to a close,
in fact, the prospect of yet higher tariffs and
intensified economic warfare was already
dragging down the whole global economy.
And while some experts believe that a relaxation of
tariffs and other steps to improve U.S.-China trade
would
stimulate the economy in tough times, Trump and his
China hawks, led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, appear to view
this moment as the perfect opportunity to
double down on anti-Chinese measures. The president
has already
hinted that he’s prepared to order yet more tariffs
on Chinese products and take other steps to hasten the
“decoupling” of the two economies. “There are many
things we could do,” he
told Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business in mid-May. “We
could cut off the whole relationship.”
Cut off the whole relationship? Some policymakers
claim that such a decoupling would stimulate growth
at home as American firms shifted manufacturing back to
the United States and its close allies. This argument,
however, ignores two key factors when it comes to
Americans desperate for work now: first, many of the
tasks currently performed by Chinese workers will be
shifted to plants in Mexico, Thailand, Vietnam, and
other low-cost manufacturing hubs; and second, any
relocation of entire production lines to this country
will take years to accomplish and, in the end,
undoubtedly wind up employing
more robots than workers. Bottom line: economically,
an intensifying Cold War is guaranteed to scuttle any
chances of a rapid recovery from the Coronavirus
Depression, dampening employment prospects for millions
of Americans.
Military Spending, Not Recovery Stimulus
And here’s another thing a new Cold War guarantees: a
significant increase in military spending at a time of
ballooning national debt and a desperate need for
investment in domestic economic recovery.
By the end of June, unless Congress votes additional
assistance, much of the $2.2 trillion in emergency
pandemic relief voted by Congress will have been used
up, leaving millions of jobless Americans and many small
business owners in dire straits. Democrats in the House
of Representatives did unveil a
plan for an additional $3 trillion in emergency
funding, including aid for struggling states and cities
and another round of direct payments to citizens. White
House officials and many Republicans
insist, however, that any further giveaways to
ordinary Americans will raise the federal debt to
unsustainable levels (a problem that never worries them
when it comes to tax cuts for corporations and the
wealthy). So passing anything like that stimulus package
appears ever less conceivable and July may leave
millions of Americans unable to pay rent as well as
other essential expenses.
When it comes to increased military spending,
however, Republicans have no such qualms. Senator Tom
Cotton of Arkansas, for example, has
introduced a $43 billion Forging Operational
Resistance to Chinese Expansion (FORCE) Act. (Nifty
title, huh?) Its goal, he claims, would be to “help
thwart the Chinese Communist Party’s main geopolitical
aim [of] pushing the United States out of the Western
Pacific [and] achieving cross-strait unification with
Taiwan via military force.” It includes, among other
things, $3.9 billion for another Virginia-class
submarine (that’s in addition to the $4.7 billion
requested for such a sub in the Pentagon’s proposed
2021 budget) and $3 billion for more of one of the
most expensive weapons systems in history, the F-35 jet
fighter (and that’s in addition to the $4.6 billion
requested for 48 of them in that same budget).
With the Democrats desperate to demonstrate their own
anti-Chinese credentials, passage of the FORCE Act, or
the somewhat more modest Pacific Deterrence Initiative
introduced by Senators Reed and Inhofe, appears to be a
sure thing. In fact, the need for yet more military
funds may prove to be the Republican rationale for
rejecting calls for additional pandemic relief.
But won’t higher military spending act as an economic
stimulus, just as it did during World War II when it
helped lift the United States out of the Great
Depression?
Indeed, passage of the FORCE Act or a variant of it
will pump additional money into the economy. But today’s
military-industrial complex bears little relation to the
one of 80 years ago when millions of workers were
mobilized to churn out thousands of tanks and planes
monthly in an all-out drive to defeat Nazi Germany.
Nowadays, military hardware has become so complex that
most of any dollar spent on a new plane, tank, or ship
goes into specialized materials and computer systems,
not armies of laborers. So the billions of dollars for
one new submarine and additional F-35s are likely to
generate only a few thousand extra jobs, while spending
the same amounts on health care or elementary school
education would
generate many times that number.
Conscription
And then there’s the issue that should be on the
minds of every young man and woman in America (along
with their parents, grandparents, and loved ones): the
draft.
In contrast to the original Cold War, young men in
this country are no longer obliged to serve in the U.S.
military, though they (and their female counterparts)
may choose to do so, whether for patriotic reasons,
economic need, or both. Even though the United States
has been continuously involved in “forever wars” since
the 9/11 attacks, the armed services have been able to
use a variety of economic and educational incentives to
keep the ranks filled (and avoid the public outcry over
those wars that would surely have accompanied a draft).
This was possible in part because the numbers of
soldiers engaged in combat at any given moment was not
huge in comparison to, say, the Korean or Vietnam War
eras and because vast numbers of troops were no longer
on tap to “contain” the Soviet Union in Europe.
A full-scale Cold War with China could, however,
prove another matter entirely, even if Pentagon manpower
requirements were somewhat diminished by U.S. troop
withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq. Large force
deployments will undoubtedly be needed to engage in a
modern version of the “containment” of China, not to
speak of deterring the further adventurism of Vladimir
Putin’s Russia. Can this be done with an all-volunteer
military? Not if tensions rise with Beijing.
Count on it: at some point, the question of
conscription is bound to come up. So far, the Department
of Defense has not opted for reinstating the draft -- a
move that would require congressional approval and
undoubtedly ignite intense political debate of the sort
top officials would prefer to avoid right now. Still,
the leadership’s overarching guidance, the
National Defense Strategy of 2018, made it quite
clear that the United States must expect to face years
of intense rivalry with its “great power competitors”
and that such an epic struggle could well require the
full mobilization of America’s war-making capabilities.
“Long-term strategic competition [with China and
Russia],” it claimed, “requires the seamless integration
of multiple elements of national power.” Conscription
was not specifically mentioned, but given the new focus
on a rising China and a reckless Russia, it will be on
the table sooner or later.
Repression and Discrimination
Another feature of the original Cold War that you
should expect in a new one is an environment of
repression, intolerance, and discrimination. In this
case, it would be against Chinese-Americans, Chinese
students and researchers currently in this country, and
non-Chinese viewed as in any way beholden to that power.
Sadly enough, signs of this have already emerged.
Officials from the FBI and the National Security Council
have, for instance, been
dispatched to leading Ivy League universities to
warn administrators against admitting or retaining
Chinese students who may be collecting scientific and
technical information to share with government-sponsored
institutions at home. Concurrently, some 30 Chinese
professors with ties to such institutions have had their
visas
denied, despite a history of collaboration with
American academics. In a more dramatic move, the chair
of Harvard University’s chemistry department, Charles
Lieber, was
arrested in January for failing to report income he
had received from a Chinese university.
Many American academics have criticized such actions
as an assault on academic freedom. Increasingly,
however, U.S. officials
insist that they represent a necessary component of
the new Cold War. And while those officials also insist
that our adversary in this struggle is the Chinese
government or people associated with it (however
tangentially), many Chinese-Americans are increasingly
experiencing suspicion and hostility just for being
Chinese. “Chinese-Americans feel targeted, and
that’s really hurtful,”
said Charlie Woo, a prominent Chinese-American
businessman.
The experience of the first Cold War suggests that
this sort of intolerance and repression will only
increase with potentially chilling effects on
intellectual freedom and the already deeply unsettled
racial situation in this country.
Hot War
And never forget that cold wars always risk becoming
hot ones. Looking back, it’s easy enough to remember
those years of the U.S.-USSR standoff as a relatively
war-free era, since the two superpowers were fearful
that a direct conflict of any sort between them might
spark an all-out thermonuclear conflagration, leaving a
planet in ruins. In reality, though, both sides engaged
in a grim assortment of bloody “proxy
wars” -- regional conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and
Afghanistan, among other places, involving troops from
one superpower and local allies armed by the other. In
addition, the U.S. and the Soviet Union nearly found
themselves in direct conflict on several occasions. The
most notable, of course, was the
Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when Moscow installed
nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in Cuba and the U.S.
nearly went to war -- which would probably have turned
into a nuclear conflict -- to remove them. Only a
last-ditch negotiating effort by President John F.
Kennedy and his Russian counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev,
averted such an outcome.
It’s easy enough to imagine that both contemporary
versions of such proxy conflicts and of the Cuban
Missile Crisis could emerge from a growing confrontation
with China. An incident on the Korean Peninsula, no
matter how it was sparked, could quickly turn into just
such a proxy war. The greatest danger, however, would be
U.S. and Chinese forces facing off directly, perhaps due
to a naval clash in the East or South China Sea.
At present, American and Chinese warships
encounter each other on a regular basis in those
waters, often coming within shooting (or
even ramming) range. The U.S. Navy insists that it’s
conducting permissible “freedom of navigation
operations” (FRONOPS) in international waters. The
Chinese -- claiming ownership of, and often building up,
the many small atolls and islets that dot those seas --
accuse the American ships of infringing on their
national maritime territory. On occasion, Chinese
gunboats have sailed
dangerously close to them, forcing them to shift
course to avoid a collision. As such incidents multiply
and tensions increase, the
risk of a serious faceoff involving loss of life on
one or both sides is bound to grow, possibly providing
the spark for a full-scale military confrontation. And
there can be no question of one thing: an intensifying
Cold War with China will only increase the odds of such
a thing happening.
No one can say at what point you or any of us will
begin to feel the direct effects of this new Cold War,
only that, as tensions and hostile acts heighten, the
consequences will prove harsh indeed. So cheer now, if
you approve of measures already taken to isolate and
punish Beijing, but think carefully before you embrace a
full-blown Cold War with China and all that it will
entail.
Michael T. Klare, a
TomDispatch regular, is the
five-college professor emeritus of peace and world
security studies at Hampshire College and a senior
visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. He is
the author of 15 books, the latest of which is
All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on
Climate Change.
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Copyright 2020 Michael T. Klar
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