Washington is playing a Game without a Strategy

Washington is playing a losing game with China

EastAsiaForum 9 May 2021

Author: Chas W Freeman Jr, Brown University

America’s latest policies toward China will prove self-defeating. US–China relations now exemplify Freeman’s third law of strategic dynamics: for every hostile act there is a more hostile reaction.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (2nd R), joined by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan (R), speaks while facing Yang Jiechi (2nd L), director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office, and Wang Yi (L), China's State Councilor and Foreign Minister, at the opening session of US-China talks in Anchorage, Alaska, 18 March 2021 (Photo: Frederic J Brown/Pool via Reuters).
Chas Freeman: Washington is playing the China Game without any Strategy.

Washington would be easy to spot in a game of chess. It’s the player with no plan beyond an aggressive opening. That is no strategy at all. The failure to think several moves ahead matters.

Washington developed some well-founded complaints about Chinese economic behaviour — and launched a trade war. Washington was alarmed about China’s potential to outcompete America — and tried to cripple it with an escalating campaign of ‘maximum pressure’. Washington saw China as a threat to US military primacy — and sought to contain it.

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China’s Strategy on STEM Scientists and R&D

US farmers have lost most of their US$24 billion Chinese market. US companies have had to accept lower profits, cut wages and jobs, defer wage hikes, and raise prices for American consumers. The US shift to managed trade has cost an estimated 245,000 American jobs, while shaving about US$320 billion off US GDP. 

American families are paying as much as US$1,277 more a year on average for consumer goods. There has been almost no reshoring of American jobs outsourced to China. The United States can expect job losses of 320,000 by 2025 and a GDP US$1.6 trillion less than it would have been.

China’s overall trade surplus rose to a new high of US$535 billion in 2020. Beijing improved its position by lowering barriers, striking free trade deals with countries other than the United States, and sponsoring a trade dispute-settlement mechanism to replace the US-sabotaged WTO.

China is investing 8 per cent more each year in education. China already accounts for a quarter of the world’s STEM workforce. Its science investment is almost on par with that of the United States and rising at an annual rate of 10 per cent as America’s falls. Its infrastructure is universally envied. China accounts for 30 per cent of global manufactures, versus America’s 16 per cent, and the gap is growing. It became the world’s largest consumer market in 2020. Its economy is ferociously competitive. China has many problems, but it has its act together and appears on top.

Imagine if only half of this Annual $750B Military Drainage had been reallocated to STEM and R&D!

The principal challenge that China presents is not military but economic and technological. But the United States is geared only to deal with military threats. China has become the antidote to the US post-Cold War-enemy-deprivation syndrome and a gratifying driver of US defence spending.

There are US aircraft and ships aggressively patrolling China’s borders, but no Chinese aircraft and ships off America’s coast. US bases ring China. There are no Chinese bases near America.

Still, the once indispensable nation ups its defence budget to make its ability to overwhelm China more credible. Yet, in the long run, this indispensable nation cannot outspend China militarily and cannot even hope to beat it on its home ground.

Just Whose Coast Is the Coast Guard Guarding? by Ted Galen Carpenter / May 11, 2021

“The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart; and thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness,” (Deuteronomy 28:28-29)

~ by Japheth on May 11, 2021.

Posted in China, US