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Mistaken Assumptions about Past and Present US Policies to China

A Critique of US “Grand Strategy toward China”, My Catbird Seat, 

If one were to propose a realistic and reasonable ‘US Grand Strategy toward China’ one would have to start by shedding all the false assumptions and bellicose proposals that have been put forth by the CFR and the authors of the Report under review. 

May 30, 2015  Seven Mistaken Assumptions, Presumptions and Prescriptions by Dr. James Petras 

Introduction

The highly influential Council on Foreign Relations recently published a Special Report entitled, “Revising US Grand Strategy toward China”, (Council on Foreign Relations Press: NY 2015), co-authored by two of its Senior Fellows, Robert Blackwill and Ashley Tellis (‘B and T’), which proposes a re-orientation of US policy toward China.

The Report a policy for buttressing ‘US primacy in Asia’ and countering what they describe as “the dangers that China’s geo-economic and military power pose to US national interests in Asia and globally”. The Report concludes by listing seven recommendations that Washington should follow to re-assert regional primacy.

This essay begins by discussing the basic fallacies underpinning the Report, including outdated and dangerous presumptions about US power and presence in Asia today, and the authors’ incoherent, contradictory and unrealistic prescriptions.

Mistaken Assumptions about Past and Present US Policies to China Robert Blackwill

Blackwill and Tellis (‘B and T’) start out with the preposterous claim that contemporary US policy toward China has been driven by its positive “effort to ‘integrate’ China into the liberal international order”. This is a gross misrepresentation of Washington’s past and current efforts to subvert the Chinese Communist government and to undermine its state- directed transition to capitalism.

Ashley Tellis  Ever since the end of the Second World War, and especially since the Chinese Civil War (1945-49), which brought the Chinese Communist Party to power, the US has poured billions of dollars in military aid to the retreating Nationalist regime and to finance the bloody Korean War (1950-53) – with the open goal of overthrowing the Chinese communist government. When US forces briefly reached the Chinese-Korean border, provoking a Chinese response, Washington threatened to unleash nuclear weapons on the Chinese. For the next two decades, the US maintained a naval and air embargo against the world’s most populous state, an insane policy which was only reversed by President Nixon’s re-establishment of diplomatic and commercial relations in 1973…………

It was not the ‘failure’ of liberal US market policies that propelled China forward to primacy in Asia, as ‘B and T’ argue in their essay, but Washington’s multi-trillion-dollar wars in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa and its wholesale conversion to Wall Street speculation, which caused the US to lose its primacy in Asia. ‘B and T’s’ claim that US ‘market liberalism’ helped China to emerge as the economic superpower in Asia is a flimsy pretext for ignoring real causes and now promoting an even greater level of US militarism in the region. Unfortunately, their muddle-headed diagnoses and militarist proposals strongly influence the Obama Administrations policy decisions!

……….Contradictions and Incoherence of B and T Policy Recommendations

B and T policy recommendations for securing US primacy in Asia are contradictory and incoherent. For example, they recommend that the US “revitalize the economy” and promote “robust growth” as a first priority, but then demand a “substantial increase” in the enormous US military budget. They advocate limits on the sale of civilian technology (so-called “dual” use) and the exclusion of China from US-sponsored Asian trade networks like the ‘Trans-Pacific Partnership’ (TPP).

Most experts openly acknowledge that the huge US ten-trillion dollar military spending over the past two decades has destroyed any possibility for ‘robust growth’ of the US economy. ‘B and T’s recommendations for even more military spending can only make matters worse by diverting public and private capital away from economic growth. This is what undermines the United States strategic future in Asia!………

China’s importance as a source of investment can only expand, especially through its newly-founded ‘Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’ (AIIB) and its plans to promote the multi-billion Silk Road linking Beijing through Central Asia to European markets. China’s financial role is going to be crucial in the new BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) bank – developed to counter the IMF.

Nothing that the Obama regime and its advisers from the Council on Foreign Relations have proposed can possibly ‘balance’ the rise of China, because their policies include the boycott of large-scale, long-term Chinese economic initiatives which Washington’s ‘allies’ are eager to join. ………….. Policies designed to surround China with US military installations and naval vessels, threaten China’s vital maritime routes. Measures to restrict the sale of ‘dual use’ (civilian) technology and efforts to build hostile regional networks and military partnerships are hardly conducive to ‘energizing high level diplomacy with Beijing. ‘B and T’s proposals and Obama’s policies are designed to confront, provoke and undermine China. That is one very obvious reason why China pursues such favorable economic agreements with its neighbors.

‘B and T’ policy proposals are doomed to fail because the US has not and cannot match China’s robust economic growth. Washington cannot compete with Beijing’s open and flexible large-scale economic agreements with all Asian countries (except the US vassal Japan).

Most Asian powers have rejected the ideological message peddled by the Obama Administration that China is a danger. They see China as a partner, a source of capital and easy financing for vital projects without the onerous ‘conditions’ that the US controlled IMF imposes. They are not interested in big, wasteful spending on costly weapons systems pushed by US war industries and which have no productive value.

An Alternative “Grand Strategy toward China”

If one were to propose a realistic and reasonable ‘US Grand Strategy toward China’ one would have to start by shedding all the false assumptions and bellicose proposals that have been put forth by the CFR and the authors of the Report under review.

First and foremost, the US would have to give up its self-appointed role as global policeman, reallocate its bloated Pentagon budget to finance vital domestic economic development, while rebalancing the US economy away from Wall Street speculation in the FIRE (finance, insurance real estate) sector, to producing goods, providing quality services and financing long-overdue infrastructure development projects……..

The US should not attempt to block China’s growth and expansion; it should assist and share in its ascendancy, especially in the face of great global climate and energy challenges. Washington is much more likely to strengthen its Asian – Pacific partnership and succeed in its diplomacy if it replaced its military posturing with robust economic growth.http://mycatbirdseat.com/2015/05/a-critique-of-us-grand-strategy-toward-china/

May 30, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, politics international, USA