Why the US Has No Chance of Winning Either a
'Cold' or a 'Hot' War Against China
By Ekaterina Blinova
July 16, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - While ramping up
pressure against Beijing on multiple fronts,
Washington appears to not be taking into account
China's sustainability and resilience, which
stem from its sophisticated culture, says
sociologist Dr. Heinz Dieterich, explaining why
the US' current China strategy is erratic and
doomed to failure.
On Monday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
announced that "most" of China's maritime claims in
the South China Sea are null and void. The People's
Republic claims up to 80% of the 3.5-million square
kilometre sea, in accordance with the so-called
"nine dash line".
"The world will not allow
Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime
empire", Pompeo stated.
In response, the Chinese embassy in the US warned
the Trump administration against "stirring up
tension and inciting confrontation in the region."
Washington Stepping Up Pressure
Against Beijing
The latest spat came on the heels of tit-for-tat
sanctions against senior politicians implemented by
Washington and then Beijing over Xinjiang as well as
the US show of force in the South China Sea earlier
this month. The Trump administration is continuing
to tighten the screws on China's trade, high-tech
sector, and artificial island building. According to
public opinion
polls, anti-China sentiment is now on the rise
in the US, with about 66% of Americans thinking
unfavourably about the People's Republic, prompting
speculations about a forthcoming "cold war" with
Beijing.
However, at the same time, the US Chamber of
Commerce has recently demanded that top Chinese
officials redouble efforts to implement phase one of
the trade agreement which was concluded between
Washington and Beijing in January 2020.
"Any scientifically sound metric of
international standing – economic, scientific,
demographic, political, military or Covid-19 –
shows, that the US is in no condition to either
win
a 'cold' or 'hot war' against China", says
Dr. Heinz Dieterich, director of the Centre for
Transition Sciences (CTS) at the Autonomous
Metropolitan University in Mexico City, and
coordinator at the World Advanced Research
Project (WARP).
Washington´s China strategy is erratic and being
coupled with the internal partisan and social divide
which has manifested as a systemic crisis in the US,
he remarks.
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The crisis is systemic, because it has affected
political, economic, cultural and social dimensions.
It dramatically evidenced the breakdown of the
intra-elite consensus between Democrats and
Republicans on how to preserve the global US
domination-system. It has also aggravated
longstanding social inequality, skyrocketing
national debt and swirling protests, the professor
notes. Besides endangering the country's internal
stability, it threatens to affect the global balance
of power and world peace, Dieterich warns.
The Demise of the Transatlantic
Partnership
While the US is now praising the UK's decision to
ban Chinese telecom equipment from its 5G networks,
the Trump administration cannot boast good relations
with the European Union, as it has largely alienated
Germany, "the undisputed leader" of the bloc.
On 29 June, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas
warned that the current tensions between the US and
Germany are unlikely to be solved in the foreseeable
future, no matter who wins the November vote:
"Everyone who thinks everything in the
trans-Atlantic partnership will be as it once was
with a Democratic president underestimates the
structural changes," Maas told the German press
agency DPA.
The Trump administration has repeatedly lambasted
Berlin over NATO spending, migration and economic
policies, as well as its participation in the
Russia-led Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, which
was recently subjected to US sanctions.
At the same time, the US open policy of
intimidation against China, Russia, North Korea and
Iran has proven ineffective and failed, according to
the academic. Iran's delivery of about 1.5 million
barrels of
Iranian gasoline and related components to Venezuela,
a country suffering from a US embargo, in May and
June 2020, clearly indicated that Washington's
policy of "maximum pressure" against nuclear or
powerful states does not work.
Despite sabre-rattling and muscle flexing in the
South China Sea, the US is unlikely to engage in a
direct confrontation with the People's Republic as it is
doomed to failure, according to Dieterich, who
recollects that the US has de facto "lost" four wars in
Asia: China's civil war (1946-49), the Korean War
(1950-53), the Vietnam War (1955-75), and most recently
in Afghanistan.
"My Center for Transition Sciences (CTS) has
developed a multi-variable 'Geopolitical Index of
Relative Power of Nation-States' (GIRP), which we
presented in Moscow in 2014 that clearly shows that
the US and its allies would have won a nuclear war
against China in the 1950s. But, even against the
lightly armed peasant army of Mao Zedong, they could
not win the Korean War," the professor notes.
The US as a superpower is today only "a shadow of
what it was after 1945", according to the academic, who
claims that it has turned from a “tiger with nuclear
teeth” (as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchov defined it)
into a “paper tiger” (as Mao Zedong called it).
US Underestimates China's
Sustainability
Touching upon the massive pressure the US has exerted
on China's economic, social and political spheres, as
well as raising stakes in the South China Sea, Dieterich
presumes that Washington underestimates China's
resilience based on its sophisticated culture and
"dialectical spirit of Confucius, Lao-Tse, and Gautama
Buddha" which have many times helped the nation overcome
dramatic historical challenges and paved the way to its
socio-economic and political transformation.
He notes that if one takes a look at the past two
centuries, one would see that the Chinese managed to
fend of the Japanese intervention, survived the Civil
War, and proved sufficient in the Korean and Vietnam
wars. IT successfully underwent the Cultural Revolution
under Mao Zedong and then further socio-cultural
transformation under Deng Xiaoping. Currently, he says,
Chinese society is making a dramatic technological leap
striving to accomplish its Made in China 2025 strategic
plan under Xi Jinping.
"These successes have produced an overwhelming
support of the people for the government, a strong
national unity behind a clear strategic leadership,
based on the scientific principles of Marxism, and an
international global power and standing in all important
metrics," Dieterich says.
The Chinese are not sitting on their thumbs while the
US is trying to build an anti-China coalition; the
People's Republic is actively forging multilateral
alliances and strengthening ties with Russia and the
Germany-led European Union.
Thus, Beijing is pushing ahead with the Regional
Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a proposed
free trade agreement in the Indo-Pacific region, which
brings together the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) and its FTA partners, namely,
China, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea.
Furthermore, the People's Republic is signalling a "positive
and open attitude" towards joining the Comprehensive
and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership
(CPTPP), an "updated" version of the Obama-era
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) shredded by Donald Trump
when he assumed the office.
To preserve the global balance of power, Washington
should adhere to a symmetrical multi-polar world and
give up plans of "subjugating China, Russia and
Europe, in order to recuperate its former world
supremacy", according to the professor. "Democracy
and Justice in the world system are only possible
between entities, which roughly have the same amount
of power," he remarks.
"The only stable and viable solution for the species
to survive is a new eco-civilisation, based on a global
non-market economic system, in which the private tyranny
of the market – a global plutocratic elite of profit
mongers – and anti-democratic oligarchic political
systems do no longer rule the destiny of the people,"
Dieterich concludes.
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