The Pentagon has been getting away with this kind of blurry language so long nobody any longer questions it. It is time to understand very clearly that the Pentagon's techno-rubbish about "flexible deterrent options to include full OPLAN [operation plan] execution," as Defense News attractively puts it, is all and only about the self-perpetuation of an immense and unproductive bureaucracy and the immense profits it secures for defense contractors.
Last week, to make sure tensions in the South China Sea are as high as possible, the U.S. Navy sent two warships into the waters off Malaysia, knowing a Chinese naval vessel was operating in the region. "It's a quite deliberate Chinese strategy to try to maximize what they perceive as being a moment of distraction and the reduced capability of the United States to pressure neighbors," a former Australian defense official explained.
Oh? The Chinese ship was a survey vessel. While it is too plain that the U.S. likes to "pressure neighbors," the man from Down Under has the rest of this one upside down. It was the U.S. that was taking cover in the Covid-19 crisis. The ships looking for trouble where there was none were American (and Australian, which joined in as they reliably do when America is chest-out in the region.)
To be clear, China's presence in the South China Sea is no different from the American Navy's in the Caribbean or the Atlantic off Norfolk, Virginia. Yes, there are disputed maritime claims, but these are far from the sea lanes the U.S. claims China threatens. As the nations involved recognize, such disputes are to be settled bi- or multi-laterally among themselves. Kuala Lumpur made this clear -- when it called for a peaceful settlement of this latest fracas of America's making. Shame on the government-supervised New York Times for its bent reporting of these events.
Sinophobia Fest
It is interesting to note the other line of attack in this new Sinophobia fest. Once again, it is time to deplore China's economic model because it is not like ours although the difference is not so great as we pretend and because it leaves a considerable role for the state in what is indisputably among the world's most dynamic economies.
It was always a sophomoric fantasy that China would transform itself into a (neo)liberal copy of the U.S. once foreign investment poured in and Chinese exports poured out. But it is time to rehearse the matter once again to blur the reality that America's "free-market," privatize-everything system has failed so miserably in the face of the Covid-19 onslaught.
"China has become a threat because its leaders are promoting a closed, authoritarian model as an alternative to democratic governance and free-market economics," none other than H. R. McMaster, a retired lieutenant general, a former Trump adviser, and a man of no demonstrated intellect, writes in the new edition of The Atlantic.
Publishing a former Army officer with no experience in China under the headline, "How China Sees the World"? shows how far the once-literate Atlantic has fallen since its better days.
McMaster continues: "The integrated nature of the Chinese Communist Party's military and economic strategies is what makes it particularly dangerous to the United States and other free and open societies." Did a man of the military-industrial-national-security-media complex actually refer critically to the integrated nature of China's defense and economic systems? Hmmm.
The cover of The Economist a few editions back asked, "Is China Winning?" The question alone is regrettable evidence that the AngloAmerican world already traffics in gains and losses as Covid -19 makes its lethal way among us. As European leaders launch a multilateral, multi-billion-dollar effort to promote vaccines, testing, and anti-viral medicines, the U.S. withdraws from the World Health Organization and declines to join. There you have it.
Given the talk in Washington of reducing dependence on China for medical equipment and a wide variety of other manufactured goods, export-dependent China stands to take a hit if supply chains are cut as drastically as Capitol Hill greats such as Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican, propose. This is an "if." The supply-chain theme is unlikely to prove anything like as practical as it seems on paper.
At the same time, China's severe but effective effort to combat Covid-19 will continue to reflect well on a system that gives the state a large role in the political economy. McMaster is right to get out there swinging, precisely because his "democratic governance and free-market economics" fail so openly.
We can push China into a corner with all our scattershot Sinophobia if we choose to carry on with it. But we should be mindful: After its "century of humiliation," China is nothing if not proud of its emergence as an equal of the West. China is a peaceable nation, self-involved and with a lot on its plate. It has no imperial designs: These are the West's specialty. There is nothing to suggest otherwise. But abuse the Chinese excessively, and we risk doing what Versailles did to Germany when it settled the peace in 1919.
Material progress, of which there has been much in the last 150 years, is not to be taken for human progress, of which we have seen little to none. This will stand as one of the enduring lessons Covid19 will force us to bear or deny with all our might.
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