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The New York Times Has Feelings for China
by Philippa Kaur 23 April 2021, 10:59
A significant event took place this week at the annual Boao conference, China’s version of the Davos World Economic Forum. It offered clues about the state of a changing world. Obsessed by the Chauvin trial, US media paid little attention to it. The Washington Post lazily printed a 400-word glibly superficial AP article emphasizing China’s military buildup and protectionist policies. The usually prolix New York Times featured fewer than 350 words on the event, just to make sure its readers wouldn’t waste too much time thinking about its possible significance. In contrast, a Times article a day earlier on China’s predictable, extravagant propaganda campaign to celebrate the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party ran to over 1,200 words.
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Bloomberg’s report on the conference reached nearly 3,000 words, claiming to have “captured the pulse of the event throughout the forum.” There is still plenty of matter to unpack even after 3,000 words, but Bloomberg has treated its readers far more respectfully than The Times or The Post. One of the explanations of this contrast is evident in a quote from the Bloomberg article: “Chinese and U.S. companies agreed both nations should prevent politicization or making troubles in dealing with trade relations, and decoupling is not good for anyone.”
Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:
Politicization:
The process by which any truth is deformed by a simplistic electoral strategy into the equivalent of a precept of an ideologically structured moral system.
Contextual Note
The problem with geopolitical truth is that it is always much too complex to reduce to any kind of simple message. There are always multiple actors, varied interests and competing intentions buzzing around in different directions. The problem with politics in modern democracies is that because its fate turns around elections, it strives to reduce all truth to “something voters can understand.”
For the average media consumer, the geopolitical realm is made up of allies and rivals. Nation-states sharing similar objectives of security and influence are deemed allies. Allies buy weapons and critical commodities from allies. Our rivals attempt to sell weapons and commodities to their allies and sometimes to their rivals, our allies. Doing so permits populist demagogues to brand them as adversaries and cite anecdotes about not respecting the rule of law. This instills a level of fear that justifies tariffs and sanctions. Without that excuse, these “defensive actions” would be denounced as protectionism. The more systematic the hostility becomes, the more it opens the door to potential conflict.
The explanation in the preceding paragraph is an example of a simplistic description. But it points to two parallel pockets of complexity whose combined force represents an exponentially higher degree of complexity. The first is properly geopolitical and concerns the way any two nations or groups of nations interact economically, politically and ideologically within a highly fluid geopolitical space. Analyzing it becomes feasible once enough facts are known about borders, demography, economic principles, institutional stability, and cultural and historical evolution, among other discernible factors.
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Internal politics is more variable. It isn’t about knowledge, but perception. Politicizing an issue means packaging and branding it as a consumable commodity for the consumer society. In the US, the world’s premier consumer society, politicization responds to open questions with closed answers. How do you feel about being constantly reminded of racial injustice? How do you feel about Russians influencing our impeccably democratic elections? How do you feel about low-paying manufacturing jobs expanding in countries with much lower pay scales and living standards? How do you feel about nations that challenge our successful monopolies by violating intellectual property rights? How do you feel about stifling what we brand as democratic revolts?
Politicians never ask how and why these issues appear on the horizon. That enables them to ignore or hide from sight the complex explanations required to decipher their meaning. The Bloomberg article provides a number of clues that The Times and The Post, beholden to their political masters, do not want people to trouble over. Among them is the very real convergence of interest between American free market business interests and the Chinese version of state capitalism.
For example, the article brings up some of the unintended consequences of the type of protectionism associated with Trump’s “America First” policy, which the Biden administration has largely maintained. Biden understands that, for electoral reasons, he must not appear to be soft on China, a nation that the media insists is an adversary because it challenges US “exceptionalism” (i.e., hegemony). The irony is that, for decades, it is American businesses that have traditionally defined what the State Department refers to by “American interests,” whose defense has in the past led to invasions and wars. Instead of sharing the public’s hatred of China, they see it as the world’s most dynamic consumer market with a population four times that of the US.
The Bloomberg article cites many critical issues, including Chinese observations on the Western policy of printing money to confront its various crises. These remarks occur alongside mention of the current Chinese focus on the digital yuan. The People’s Bank of China’s Deputy Governor Li Bo claimed it was not meant to threaten the dollar. But clearly, these two parallel phenomena, in conjunction with the continuing development of the Belt and Road Initiative, indicate a weakening of the dollar’s status in the offing. Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, drove the point home when he said, “The world is overweight in U.S. bonds and underweight in Chinese assets.”
Larry Summers, the Biden adviser whose career Robert Kuttner described at The American Prospect as “marked by a carnival of policy debacles,” spoke at the forum to defend the idea that the US and China must find ways of working closely together: “It doesn’t really matter what their feelings are about each other’s attitudes,” so long as they cooperate on building global business. It isn’t clear whether Summers is aware that politics at home is all about “feelings,” not the reasoning of the global business crowd.
Historical Note
In contrast with Summers, The Times and The Post follow the lead of the Democratic administration that needs to stoke the feelings of the population for electoral reasons. At the same time, they must serve the interests of the multinational corporations that finance their campaigns. This central paradox has, over the past several decades, polluted the reporting of the once reasonably serious media. Which master must they obey?
Reading a New York Times article about global politics is an excellent guide to understanding the political pressures that exist inside the Gray Lady’s editorial department. It is far less valuable for a reader seeking to understand the issues it discusses. The articles seek to validate feelings while carefully avoiding troubling nuance. The key is to reduce it to a game of heroes and villains. The Trump administration was beyond redemption. The Biden administration remains beyond criticism, though we have seen a possible exception concerning the “reckless” idea of ending a glorious war in Afghanistan after a mere 20 years. The paper’s relationship with the military and security state is too deep to deprive them of their voice.
The Times’ diminutive piece conveys a unique and largely incoherent message suggesting China’s hypocrisy when talking about cooperation and free trade while in reality challenging US economic hegemony. The AP article republished by The Post drives in a different direction. After a few random quotes from the event, it focuses on inspiring fear of China’s military build-up. With four times the population, China spends about a third as much on the military annually as the US. Given that auditors found a hole of $21 trillion over two decades’ worth of Pentagon’s accounts, the difference is probably far greater.
And yet the impression the writer, Joe McDonald, leaves is that Xi Jinping cannot be telling the truth when he claims that “No matter how far it develops, China will never seek hegemony, expand, seek spheres of influence or engage in an arms race.”
The rhetorical game that played out at Hainan provides some real clues about what is clearly a moment of hegemonic transition is already having a seismic impact on history. The serious media continues to believe the average American has more important things to think about. The politicians agree.
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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The Matter of Xi’s Succession
by Philippa Kaur 21 April 2021, 15:43
At the all-important two sessions (lianghui) meetings last month, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials adopted a new and surprisingly unambitious Five-Year Plan, reoriented the country’s technology strategy and redoubled the crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong. All of this was documented in the English-language media. But another crucial CCP announcement flew below the media’s radar. An innocuous-sounding procedural change gave President Xi Jinping the authority to dismiss vice premiers of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, one of the last potential bastions of elite opposition to his rule. Premier Li Keqiang, nominally the second-most powerful man in China, has now been effectively sidelined. Furthermore, Hu Chunhua, Xi’s charismatic potential successor, can now be fired at will.
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Xi was already on track for a third term. First, he was “reelected” to a second term at the 19th Party Congress in September 2017. A few months later, the pliant National People’s Congress (NPC) lifted the two-term limit for the presidency. Despite acquiring total control, Xi remains wary of potential rivals, particularly Li Keqiang, his second-in-command. At the 19th Party Congress, Xi kept Li on largely as a figurehead, calculating that elevating anyone else to the number-two job would have anointed them as a potential successor. Since 2017, Xi repeatedly sought opportunities to undermine Li, cannily dispatching him to Wuhan in January 2020 to associate the premier with the botched response to COVID-19.
Neutralizing Potential Challengers
Xi is now looking beyond Li with the goal of neutralizing all potential challengers. Li has little practical influence in the CCP’s top echelons, but he wields formidable power on paper. Formally speaking, the CCP and the Chinese state are separate institutions. Xi Jinping is both general secretary of the CCP and president of the People’s Republic of China. Li is ostensibly the second-ranked official in the CCP, but his position as the head of the State Council, the executive branch of the Chinese state, is more important. Until the recent rule change, Xi had no formal authority to order direct personnel changes in the State Council. That meant Li’s four main subordinates, known as vice premiers, had some level of job security and could potentially use their position as a springboard to challenge Xi.
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All of that has changed at this year’s lianghui with a legislative amendment. The law in question is Article 32 of the Organic Law of the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China. The NPC meets only once per year, at the spring lianghui. Under the new rules, the Standing Committee of the NPC, which answers to Xi, can remove any official on the State Council, except the prime minister, at any time. This means that Xi does not have to wait for the next lianghui to get rid of Li’s subordinates.
In strict formal terms, if Xi wanted to fire a vice premier, Li would still have to consent. In practice, Li’s hand would be forced by Xi. The NPC is China’s top legislative body, a rubber-stamp parliament that exists to legitimize the CCP’s actions. If the NPC recommends personnel changes on the State Council, the premier of the State Council cannot resist. If Li were to do so, that would be tantamount to overriding the “democratic will” of the people of China.
Why is Xi bothering to amend the law if his third term is not in doubt? We do not know for sure, but we can speculate. Perhaps Xi is just generally wary of Li. But there might be another reason. There was widespread grumbling among the top brass of the CCP when Xi eliminated term limits three years ago. Rumors tell us that there is still some level of semi-organized resistance, with Li potentially involved. It might also be the case that Xi tried to replace one or more vice premiers, but Li resisted. Vice premiers of the State Council are all members of the CCP Politburo, the 20-member body that is the second-highest organ in the party bureaucracy.
Xi probably wants total control of the Politburo. Of course, Xi has other ways to take out such senior officials. In the past, “anti-corruption” crackdowns have cut many down to size. However, this anti-corruption process is disruptive and could send a signal that Xi’s control is shaky. Therefore, a sneaky legal change might be a better alternative.
Succession Matters
We suspect that Xi is targeting a particular leader. China has four vice premiers: Han Zheng, Liu He, Sun Chunlan and Hu Chunhua. Han is a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the CCP’s top body. This legal amendment would not be enough to get rid of Han. So, he is not the target of Xi’s ire. Neither is Liu, Xi’s personal friend who won the economic policy argument in the 14th Five-Year Plan. In the shady world of CCP politics, Liu’s job seems safe as of now. Sun, the highest-ranking woman in the modern history of Chinese politics, is past the mandatory retirement age and poses no threat to Xi. This leaves Hu as the only possible target for the amendment. The fact that he is the most charismatic and popular of the vice premiers makes him a potential threat to Xi.
From 2012 to 2017, Hu was the party secretary of Guangdong, China’s most prosperous province. For decades, this position has been a stepping stone for national leadership. Ironically, Xi’s father served as party secretary of Guangdong, as did other CCP luminaries such as Zhao Ziyang, Li Changchun, Zhang Dejiang and Wang Yang. Hu is the youngest official at his level of seniority in the CCP. He is also connected, though not related, to Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao. Before the 2017 NPC, there was widespread speculation that Hu Chunhua would leapfrog straight into the Politburo Standing Committee and be groomed as a putative future leader. Xi prevented this, giving Hu the position of vice premier instead. Now, Xi has gone further and hung a sword over Hu’s head.Xi is determined to ensure an orderly confirmation of his third term at the next NPC in 2022. For three years, the Chinese media have humored Xi by resolutely avoiding the topic of his succession. Xi knows that it cannot be avoided indefinitely. According to longstanding CCP custom, anyone featuring in the succession sequence needs experience in the positions of vice premier, national vice chairman and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission. Those who currently occupy these positions are either too old or not close enough to Xi to be considered successor material. The only exception is Hu who now holds office at the pleasure of Xi.
The study of Chinese elite politics is as much an art as a science. Like Kremlinologists at the height of the Cold War, China analysts make educated inferences from a small number of highly choreographed public events and documents. As a result, the line between speculation and analysis is often blurry. Nevertheless, as US-China relations deteriorate, the CCP’s succession plans are more important now than at any point since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976.
Coming out of the lianghui, all signs indicate that Xi remains at the height of his power at home. Furthermore, he is likely to enter his third term in 2022 with a new suite of tools to deter — and, if necessary, eliminate — potential elite rivals. In this context, pushing for Xi’s ouster, as one anonymous senior US official recently recommended, would be reckless as it is likely to backfire.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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The Spread of Global Hate
by Philippa Kaur 16 April 2021, 12:58
One insidious way to torture the detainees at Guantanamo Bay was to blast music at them at all hours. The mixtape, which included everything from Metallica to the Meow Mix jingle, was intended to disorient the captives and impress upon them the futility of resistance. It worked: This soundtrack from hell did indeed break several inmates.
For four years, Americans had to deal with a similar sonic blast, namely the “music” of President Donald Trump. His voice was everywhere: on TV and radio, screaming from the headlines of newspapers, pumped out nonstop on social media. MAGAmen and women danced to the repetitive beat of his lies and distortions. Everyone else experienced the nonstop assault of Trump’s instantly recognizable accent and intonations as nails on a blackboard. After the 2016 presidential election, psychologists observed a significant uptick in the fears Americans had about the future. One clinician even dubbed the phenomenon “Trump anxiety disorder.”
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The volume of Trump’s assault on the senses has decreased considerably since January. Obviously, he no longer has the bully pulpit of the Oval Office to broadcast his views. The mainstream media no longer covers his every utterance. Most importantly, the major social media platforms have banned him. In the wake of the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, Twitter suspended Trump permanently under its glorification of violence policy. Facebook made the same decision, though its oversight board is now revisiting the former president’s deplatforming.
It’s not only Trump. The Proud Boys, QAnon, the militia movements: The social media footprint of the far right has decreased a great deal in 2021, with a parallel decline in the amount of misinformation available on the Web.
And it’s not just a problem of misinformation and hate speech. According to a new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on domestic terrorism, right-wing extremists have been involved in 267 plots and 91 fatalities since 2015, with the number of incidents rising in 2020 to a height unseen in a quarter of a century. A large number of the perpetrators are loners who have formed their beliefs from social media. As one counterterrorism official put it, “Social media has afforded absolutely everything that’s bad out there in the world the ability to come inside your home.”
So, why did the tech giants provide Trump, his extremist followers and their global counterparts unlimited access to a growing audience over those four long years?
Facebook Helps Trump
In a new report from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), Heidi Beirich and Wendy Via write: “For years, Trump violated the community standards of several platforms with relative impunity. Tech leaders had made the affirmative decision to allow exceptions for the politically powerful, usually with the excuse of ‘newsworthiness’ or under the guise of ‘political commentary’ that the public supposedly needed to see.”
Even before Trump became president, Facebook was cutting him a break. In 2015, he was using the social media platform to promote a Muslim travel ban, which generated considerable controversy, particularly within Facebook itself. The Washington Post reports:
“Outrage over the video led to a companywide town hall, in which employees decried the video as hate speech, in violation of the company’s policies. And in meetings about the issue, senior leaders and policy experts overwhelmingly said they felt that the video was hate speech, according to three former employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg expressed in meetings that he was personally disgusted by it and wanted it removed, the people said.”
But the company’s most prominent Republican, Vice-President of Global Policy Joel Kaplan, persuaded Zuckerberg to change his position. In spring 2016, when Zuckerberg wanted to condemn Trump’s plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico, he was again persuaded to step back for fear of seeming too partisan.
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Facebook went on to play a critical role in getting Trump elected. It wasn’t simply the Russian campaign to create fake accounts, fake messaging and even fake events using Facebook, or the theft of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica. More important was the role played by Facebook staff in helping Trump’s digital outreach team maximize its use of social media. The Trump campaign spent $70 million on Facebook ads and raised much of its $250 million in online fundraising through Facebook as well.
Trump established a new paradigm through brute force and money. As he turned himself into clickbait, the social media giants applied the same “exceptionalism” to other rancid politicians. More ominously, the protection accorded politicians extended to extremists. According to an account of a discussion at a Twitter staff meeting, one employee explained that “on a technical level, content from Republican politicians could get swept up by algorithms aggressively removing white supremacist material. Banning politicians wouldn’t be accepted by society as a trade-off for flagging all of the white supremacist propaganda.”
Of course, in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, social media organizations decided that society could indeed accept the banning of politicians, at least when it came to some politicians in the United States.
The Real Fake News
In the Philippines, an extraordinary 97% of internet users had accounts with Facebookas of 2019, up from 40% in 2018 (by comparison, about 67% of Americans have Facebook accounts). Increasingly, Filipinos get their news from social media. That’s bad news for the mainstream media in the Philippines. And that’s particularly bad news for journalists like Maria Ressa, who runs an online news site called Rappler.
At a press conference for the GPAHE report, Ressa described how the government of Rodrigo Duterte, with an assist from Facebook, has made her life a living hell. Like Trump, President Duterte came to power on a populist platform spread through Facebook. Because of her critical reporting on government affairs, Ressa felt the ire of the Duterte fan club, which generated half a million hate posts that, according to one study, consisted of 60% attacks on her credibility and 40% sexist and misogynist slurs. This onslaught created a bandwagon effect that equated journalists like her with criminals.
This noxious equation on social media turned into a real case when the Philippine authorities arrested Ressa in 2019 and convicted her of the dubious charge of “cyberlibel.” She faces a sentence of as much as 100 years in prison.
“Our dystopian present is your dystopian future,” she observed. What happened in the Philippines in that first year of Duterte became the reality in the United States under Trump. It was the same life cycle of hate in which misinformation is introduced in social media, then imported into the mainstream media and supported from the top down by opportunistic politicians.
The Philippines faces another presidential election next year, and Duterte is barred from running again by term limits. Duterte’s daughter, who is currently the mayor of Davao City just like her father had been, tops the early polls, though she hasn’t thrown her hat in the ring and her father has declared that women shouldn’t run for president. This time around, however, Facebook disrupted the misinformation campaign tied to the Dutertes when it took down fake accounts coming from China that supported the daughter’s potential bid for the presidency.
President Duterte was furious. “Facebook, listen to me,” he said. “We allow you to operate here hoping that you could help us. Now, if government cannot espouse or advocate something which is for the good of the people, then what is your purpose here in my country? What would be the point of allowing you to continue if you can’t help us?”
Duterte had been led to believe, based on his previous experience, that Facebook was his lapdog. Other authoritarian regimes had come to expect the same treatment. In India, according to the GPAHE report, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party:
“… was Facebook India’s biggest advertising spender in 2020. Ties between the company and the Indian government run even deeper, as the company has multiple commercial ties, including partnerships with the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the Ministry of Women and the Board of Education. Both CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg have met personally with Modi, who is the most popular world leader on Facebook. Before Modi became prime minister, Zuckerberg even introduced his parents to him.”
Facebook has also cozied up to the right-wing government in Poland, misinformation helped get Jair Bolsonaro elected in Brazil, and the platform served as a vehicle for the Islamophobic content that contributed to the rise of the far right in the Netherlands. But the decision to ban Trump has set in motion a backlash. In Poland, for instance, the Law and Justice Party has proposed a law to fine Facebook and others for removing content if it doesn’t break Polish law, and a journalist has attempted to establish a pro-government alternative to Facebook called Albicla.
Back in the USA
Similarly, in the United States, the far right have suddenly become a big booster of free speech now that social media platforms have begun to deplatform high-profile users like Trump and take down posts for their questionable veracity and hate content. In the second quarter of 2020 alone, Facebook removed 22.5 million posts.
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Facebook has tried to get ahead of this story by establishing an oversight board that includes members like Jamal Greene, a law professor at Columbia University; Julie Owono, executive director at Internet Sans Frontiere; and Nighat Dad, founder of the Digital Rights Foundation. Now, Facebook users can also petition the board to remove content.
With Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others now removing a lot of extremist content, the far right have migrated to other platforms, such as Gab, Telegram, and MeWe. They continue to spread conspiracy theories, anti-COVID vaccine misinformation and pro-Trump propaganda on these alternative platforms. Meanwhile, the MAGA crowd awaits the second coming of Trump in the form of a new social media platform that he plans to launch in a couple of months to remobilize his followers.
Even without such an alternative alt-right platform — Trumpbook? TrumpSpace? Trumper? — the life cycle of hate is still alive and well in the United States. Consider the “great replacement theory,” according to which immigrants and denizens of the non-white world are determined to “replace” white populations in Europe, America and elsewhere. Since its inception in France in 2010, this extremist conspiracy theory has spread far and wide on social media. It has been picked up by white nationalists and mass shooters. Now, in the second stage of the life cycle, it has landed in the mainstream media thanks to right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson, who recently opined, “The Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate of the voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.”
Pressure is mounting on Fox to fire Carlson, though the network is resisting. Carlson and his supporters decry the campaign as yet another example of “cancel culture.” They insist on their First Amendment right to express unpopular opinions. But a privately-owned media company is under no obligation to air all views, and the definition of acceptability is constantly evolving.
Also, a deplatformed Carlson would still be able to air his crank views on the street corner or in emails to his followers. No doubt when Trumpbook debuts at some point in the future, Carlson’s biggest fan will also give him a digital megaphone to spread lies and hate all around the world. These talking heads will continue talking no matter what. The challenge is to progressively shrink the size of their global platform.
*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Why Joe Biden Must Act on Myanmar
by Philippa Kaur 14 April 2021, 17:33
Burma, as Myanmar was known then, won its independence from the British in 1948. Since then, bilateral relations between the US and Myanmar can at best be described as lackluster. They have lacked what experts would call “strategic compulsions.” Western allies of the US lack strategic calculus in dealing with Myanmar. They have viewed it from the narrow prism of moralistic Western standards of democracy, human rights, rule of law, corruption and the trafficking of humans, drugs and weapons.
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To be fair, the US has not always or entirely been sanctimonious. The historic Kissinger Doctrine integrated China into the liberal postwar order. It facilitated investments into, transferred technology to and trained manpower in China. Under Deng Xiaoping and his successors, China continued its peaceful rise. Xi Jinping, the current Chinese president, has ended that peaceful rise and destabilized the world order.
Missing Out on Myanmar
The US approach to Myanmar has been muddled and inconsistent. During the Cold War, Washington was happy to deal with allies in Asia that were military dictatorships. Under President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the US was happy to deal with a communist regime.
In contrast, Burma was a parliamentary democracy from 1948 to 1962 when Ne Win led a military coup. For the next 26 years, the country was ruled by the Tatmadaw, the official name of the country’s armed forces. In 1988, nationwide protests broke out. Aung San Suu Kyi, the Oxford-educated daughter of Burmese independence leader Aung San, emerged as the leader of a pro-democracy movement. The National League of Democracy (NLD) went on to win the 1990, 2015 and 2020 parliamentary elections.
In comparison with China, Myanmar’s regime has been far less oppressive. There is no counterpart to the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. The Tatmadaw has yielded to public pressure and held largely free and fair elections. In elections, even members of the Tatmadaw have voted for Suu Kyi’s NLD. Yet the US and its Western allies have ignored the strategic importance of Myanmar in the Indian Ocean region in general and the Bay of Bengal in particular.
Chinese Influence Wanes and Waxes
In the past, the US and its allies put pressure on the Tatmadaw by imposing sanctions on Myanmar. Instead of weakening the Tatmadaw, sanctions hurt the people and pushed the country into the arms of China. Between 2004 and 2007, a generational change in the Tatmadaw caused a rethink in Myanmar’s relationship with China.
The younger officers of the Tatmadaw decided to decrease dependence on Beijing. They tried to reduce Chinese influence in political and military governance. They attempted to transition to some form of democracy and improve relations with the West and neighbors like India. In 2011, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton swung by Myanmar. President Barack Obama visited twice in 2012 and 2014. By 2016-17, the persecution of Rohingya Muslims, an ethnic minority in the country’s Rakhine state, was in the news and relations between the US and Myanmar were already souring.
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Yet this was a relatively good time for the country. Even financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank opened their purse strings. During this brief honeymoon period with the West, China found itself on the back foot for the first time since 1988.
In 2011, Myanmar suspended the construction of the Myitsone dam, a controversial hydroelectric project financed and led by a state-owned Chinese company. In 2015, Myanmar’s general elections led to yet another victory for Suu Kyi’s NLD. This was an opportune moment for the West to build relations with Myanmar and counter China. The Tatmadaw had ceded ground to elected officials. Washington could have cultivated both of Myanmar’s centers of power: the NLD and the Tatmadaw.
But the US missed this opportunity. From 2017, the Rohingya issue clouded Myanmar’s relationship with the West and allowed China to regain its clout in the country. The military coup in February this year strengthens China’s hand further.
China has already been strengthening its hand by following its tried and tested policy of investing in infrastructure. The China–Myanmar Transport Corridor is connecting the Chinese province of Yunnan to the Bay of Bengal. Roads, railways, river navigation, oil and gas pipelines are deepening economic ties between Myanmar and China. It is part of the Middle Kingdom’s “Look South” policy that seeks to draw Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan into the Chinese arc of influence.
The military coup in Myanmar presents a great opportunity to China and represents the first major foreign policy challenge to President Joe Biden’s administration as well as the Quadrilateral Security Alliance, the informal strategic dialogue between the US, Japan, Australia and India known as the Quad.
The US Still Has Some Cards
China may be in the ascendant right now, but the West still has clout in Myanmar. Suu Kyi studied at Oxford, lived in the UK for decades and married an Englishman. People from Myanmar have immigrated to Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US. So, the West commands what Joseph Nye has calls “soft power” in the country. Burmese people want to immigrate not to China but to the US.
Yet American foreign policy to Myanmar has squandered this soft power prodigally. Obama is the only American president who gave Myanmar the attention it deserved. His foreign policy pivot to Asia was a strategic masterstroke, but Donald Trump abandoned Obama’s outreach not only to Myanmar but the rest of Asia.
The military coup is a wake-up call for the US to act. China is now firmly in the saddle in Myanmar. The Tatmadaw is finding ferocious resistance on the streets. There is another overlooked problem. Like many postcolonial states, Myanmar is a bewildering patchwork of cultural, ethnic and linguistic groups. Many of them have been fighting for independence or autonomy for years.
Few in the West realize that a savage conflict might be about to break out. About 20 rebel groups, including the United Wa State Army, Karen National Union, Kachin Independence Army and Arakan Army, control 33% of Myanmar’s territory. Many of them have condemned the coup. In response, the Tatmadaw has launched airstrikes in Karen state. With drugs and arms flush in rebel areas, Myanmar might be about to become the new Afghanistan.
The Quad leaders’ joint statement on the White House website emphasizes “the urgent need to restore democracy and the priority of strengthening democratic resilience” in Myanmar. This mention is heartening, but the Quad and the US need to do more. Opening dialogue with the Tatmadaw would be a good start. Intelligence sources report that most young officers favor multi-party democracy and are wary of Myanmar turning into a Chinese tributary.
A carrot-and-stick approach by Washington could still work. The World Bank has halted payments to projects after the military coup. International condemnation has rattled the Tatmadaw. Pressure to reach a political reconciliation might bear fruit. Carrots in the form of infrastructure funding and development assistance could prove attractive. Involving Asian nations such as India, Japan, South Korea and Bangladesh, as well as member states of ASEAN, could pave the path to Myanmar’s transition away from military rule.
Despite foreign policy blunders, economic woes and internal division, the US is still the undisputed top dog in the world. With the help of its Asian and European allies, Washington can counter China, prevent civil war and restore democracy in Myanmar. The time has come for Biden to act.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Japan’s Art of Forgetfulness
by Philippa Kaur 14 April 2021, 14:28
What choices are available to a nation that, in its quest for modernization, foolishly built a nuclear reactor in a seismically active tsunami zone? The Royal Society reported in 2015 that the disastrous fate of Fukushima in 2011 resulted from a “cascade of engineering and regulatory failures.” This included not only multiple design errors and miscalculations of the geological risks, but also “methodological mistakes that nobody experienced in tsunami engineering should have made.” The report concluded that the “Fukushima accident was preventable, if international best practices and standards had been followed.”
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A full 10 years later, after dealing with the aftermath in a reasonably efficient manner, Japan has one major task left. It must find a way of disposing of more than a million tons of contaminated water from the powerplant’s three decommissioned reactors. To the chagrin not only of neighboring countries including China and South Korea but also environmental groups and even Japan’s own fishing industry, the Japanese government has made the controversial decision to close the book on Fukushima by dumping the water into the ocean.
According to Al Jazeera, the Japanese government claims to have taken this decision on the basis of its newfound concern with the “international best practices and standards” the Royal Society referred to in its report. The government released this statement on April 13: “On the premise of strict compliance with regulatory standards that have been established, we select oceanic release.”
Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:
Oceanic release:
An act stirred by the temptation to believe that whatever you can discreetly dump into the ocean will be so diluted by the mass of moving water that within weeks or months, even if it is public knowledge, no one will actually remember that the deed was done or blame those who did it
Contextual Note
In his explanation of the government’s decision, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga appealed to the fabled capacity of the Japanese to accept the inevitable. “Releasing the … treated water,” he said, “is an unavoidable task to decommission the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant and reconstruct the Fukushima area.” As a politician, not only does he feel it is his humble duty to put the errors of the past behind him, but he knows it is always effective to focus on potential positive outcomes — in this case, the reconstruction of the non-nuclear reconstruction of the affected area. Averted readers should know that when a politician from any nation calls something “unavoidable,” the most sensible reaction is to suppose that what they really mean by “unavoidable” is what we judge to be the most convenient and economic way for us to dismiss such an annoying issue.
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Polls in Japan show little support for the government. Le Monde reports that a poll conducted by NHK, the Japanese broadcaster, found that 51% of those polled opposed the plan, with only 18% supporting it. The Chinese called the plan “extremely irresponsible.” South Korea seconded the Chinese, deeming it “totally unacceptable.” Protesters in Seoul accused Japan of engaging in “nuclear terrorism,” echoing the Iranian government’s complaint this week following Israel’s brazen sabotage of the nuclear facility at Natanz in Iran. Even Taiwan — more fearful of China than of contaminated waters — expressed its concern, though much more timidly.
These reactions contrast with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s tweet in which he thanks “Japan for its transparent efforts in its decision to dispose of the treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi site.” Transparent? China complained that the Japanese made their decision “without fully consulting with neighboring countries and the international community.” Is that what Blinken sees as a “transparent” effort? Or does he mean that because the operation will only be carried out in two years’ time, announcing it today is an example of transparency? After all, the US tends to act first and explain later and rarely worries about transparency.
Then there is another consideration the Japanese government would be wise to ponder. Dumping the still polluted water into the Pacific means that sooner rather than later the West Coast of the US will be affected. At some point in the future, could this have dire consequences for Japanese Americans who risk being assaulted for spreading “Fukushima cancer” just as Chinese Americans have been attacked for releasing the “Wuhan flu”?
Historical Note
The Japanese language has a common expression: Shouganai. One specialist of Japanese offers this explanation of the expression: “The best way I can translate ‘Shouganai’ is ‘It can’t be helped,’” comparing it with the well-known French expression, “C’est la vie.” The author confesses to using the Japanese “phrase almost daily.” Italian Americans from New York might prefer to compare it with their favorite all-purpose phrase for dismissing any subject they don’t want to discuss: “Forget about it.” Every culture has its own way of accepting what is written off as a fatality that cannot be constructively addressed.
Pushing the explanation of the Japanese phrase further, the author insists that despite always being used in reference to negative events, Shouganai is “actually a pretty positive way to look at the world.” It signifies a basic feeling at the core of Japanese culture, that it’s “better to not get hung up on things outside of your control.” In contrast, US culture encourages making every effort — including at times extreme violence — to demonstrate one is in control.
Since the end of the Second World War, the Japanese government has developed the art of not getting hung up on disagreeable past events from the past, such as the fate of the Chinese and Korean sex slaves they euphemized with the name “comfort women” at a time in their history when they believed they could dominate all of Asia. After their six-week-long massacre known as the Rape of Nanking, sensing the risk of bad PR the knowledge of the brutal campaign of massacre and violent rape might produce, the emperor decided to step in. The answer was less murder and more rape, but better organized and subject to the kind of discipline and social rituals with which Japanese culture feels comfortable. The treatment of the comfort women was unspeakably cruel and inhuman, but the Japanese military had the good sense to manage it as a stable institution rather than allowing rape to play out according to the random whims of marauding soldiers.
The website History explains the pattern of denial associated with this episode: “For decades, the history of the ‘comfort women’ went undocumented and unnoticed. When the issue was discussed in Japan, it was denied by officials who insisted that ‘comfort stations’ had never existed.” Whether those same officials were saying Shouganai in private while they systematically refused to admit anything in public will never be known. Even today, the Japanese government continues to deny some of the most obvious facts about the “comfort women.”
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The Fukushima catastrophe lacks the deeply human moral dimension associated with the crimes perpetrated by Japanese imperialism in the early 20th century. The scandal relating to the fact that the nuclear catastrophe was preventable had more to do with professional negligence and government incompetence than moral failings, cruel personal behavior and abusive policies, though the frontier between conscious and neglectful abuses will always be difficult to define. The tendency to deny and then forget is common to both.
On the purely moral plane, were either of these human disasters in any way comparable with US President Harry Truman’s decision to drop — without warning — not one but two atomic bombs on urban civilian targets at the end of World War II? The immediate difference between the attitudes of the two nations is that the Japanese showed some sense of shame, however hypocritical, following the Rape of Nanking. Their consistent denial of the true history of comfort women also indicates a degree of implicit shame. It’s as much a question of not losing face as it is of aggressive denial.
In contrast, the American government never attempted to disguise its fulsome pride in an achievement that — following its cultural logic summed up in the expression, “a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do” — put an end to a world war. Could it have been done differently? Of course. But for most Americans, the positive result canceled all the useless scruples one might have concerning the gravity of the damage done.
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Peter Thiel’s Bitcoin Paranoia
by Philippa Kaur 13 April 2021, 17:14
Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel finds himself in a confusing moral quandary as he struggles to weigh the merits of his nerdish belief in cryptocurrency against his patriotic paranoia focused on China’s economic rivalry with the United States. Participating in “a virtual event held for members of the Richard Nixon Foundation,” Thiel, while reaffirming his position as a “pro-Bitcoin maximalist,” felt compelled to call his faith into doubt due to his concern that China may use bitcoin to challenge US financial supremacy.
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According to Yahoo’s Tim O’Donnell, Thiel “thinks Beijing may view Bitcoin as a tool that could chip away at the dollar’s might.” He directly quotes Thiel who wonders whether “Bitcoin should also be thought [of] in part as a Chinese financial weapon against the U.S.”
Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:
Financial weapon:
The role any significant amount of money in any one person’s, company’s or nation’s hand is expected to play to assert power and obtain undue advantages in today’s competitive capitalism
Contextual Note
Thiel may be stating the obvious. Money is power and concentrations of money amount to concentrated power. The point of power is to influence, intimidate or conquer, depending on how concentrated the power may be. It is ironically appropriate that the event at which Thiel spoke was organized by the Nixon Foundation. Richard Nixon was known for putting the quest for power above any other consideration. He was also known for opening the relationship with China, which many Republicans today believe led to a pattern of behavior that allowed China to eventually emerge as a threat far more menacing than the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Nixon was also the president who destroyed the Bretton Woods system that set the financial rules ensuring stable international relations in the wake of World War II.
Thiel’s thoughts are both transparently imperialistic. They follow Donald Trump’s “America First” logic, while at the same time revealing Thiel’s uncertainty about how to frame it in the context of Bitcoin. His version of “America First” has less to do with the Trumpian idea that America should worry first about its own internal matters and later deal with the world than with the idea of the neocon conviction that the US must impose itself as the unique hegemon in the global economy. In Thiel’s mind, this sits uncomfortably alongside his made-in-Silicon Valley belief that cryptocurrencies represent the trend toward something that might be called “financial democracy.”
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According to O’Donnell, Thiel “explained that China isn’t fond of the fact that the U.S. dollar is the world’s major reserve currency because it gives the U.S. global economic ‘leverage,’ and he thinks Beijing may view Bitcoin as a tool that could chip away at the dollar’s might.” O’Donnell is guilty of somewhat hypocritical understatement when he claims that it is all about China not being “fond of” the dollar’s status as the world’s major reserve currency. Who besides the US would be “fond of” such a thing? Those are O’Donnell’s words, not Thiel’s. As for the idea that Bitcoin might chip away at the dollar’s might, Thiel avoids making that specific point and prefers a more vaguely paranoid reading of events as he suggests a kind of plot in which China may be using Bitcoin to undermine US hegemony.
Thiel’s phrasing places him clearly in the realm of what might be called diplomatic paranoia. He begins with a statement of speculative uncertainty as he expresses his concern with China’s turning Bitcoin into a financial weapon. Here are his exact words: “I do wonder whether at this point Bitcoin should also be thought in part of as a Chinese financial weapon against the US where it threatens fiat money but it especially threatens the US dollar and China wants to do things to weaken it.”
“I do wonder whether at this point Bitcoin should also be thought … of” expresses a deviously framed insinuation of evil intentions by a Fu Manchu version of the Chinese government. This is a popular trope among Republicans and even Democrats today, who vie with each other to designate China as an enemy rather than a rival. But Thiel’s admission that it’s really about “wondering” tells us that we are closer to Alice’s Wonderland than to the CIA book of facts.
Thiel then adds the temporal detail of “at this point,” which introduces a surreal notion of time that has more to do with a fictional dramatic structure than the reality of contemporary history. It is tantamount to saying: This is where the plot thickens. And his suggestion of how it “should be thought of,” besides being manipulative, indicates that we are invited into accepting the plot of a paranoid fantasy made up of thought rather than reality.
He then explains what he means by “a Chinese financial weapon against the US.” Though he claims to be a believer in the unfettered freedom of cryptocurrency, he accuses it of violating what might be called “the rule of law” insofar as “it threatens fiat money,” which is the privilege of every nation on earth. But that worry has little merit compared to the fact it “especially threatens the US dollar,” which — it goes without saying — China wants to weaken.
Thiel knows where the money is. It lies in the primacy of the US dollar. That is why the US has 800 military bases across the globe.
Historical Note
Since the dismantling in 1971 of the Bretton Woods system by US President Richard Nixon — in whose name the Richard Nixon Foundation was created — the dollar has functioned as the ultimate and most devastating financial weapon in history wielded by a single government. The Bretton Woods agreement, signed in 1944 by 44 countries, allowed the dollar to play a controlled role as the world’s reserve currency thanks to its convertibility with gold. When the growing instability of the dollar, due in part to the Vietnam War, threatened the order established by Bretton Woods, Nixon unilaterally broke the link with gold. Instantaneously, the US was free to weaponize the dollar for any purpose it judged to be in its interest.
Nixon produced one of the greatest faits accomplis in history. As with many successful unnoticed revolutions, Nixon’s administration presented the uncoupling of the dollar and gold as a temporary measure, the response to a momentary crisis. It took two years for the world to notice that Bretton Woods had definitely collapsed. The era of floating currencies began. Money could finally be seen for what it is: a shared imaginary repository of value that could eventually become the focus of what Yuval Noah Harari has called the religion of capitalism in his book, “Money.”
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For many people, Bitcoin has become a kind of alternative religion, or rather a vociferous radical sect on the fringes of the global religion of neoliberal capitalism. Bitcoin as a concept highlights the lesson brought home by the collapse of Bretton Woods: that the value of money people exchange, despite Milton Friedman’s objections, is literally based on nothing and therefore meaningless. That also means — though the faithful are not ready to admit it — that its value is infinitely manipulable. It appears to derive from economic reality but is anchored in little more than what a small group of people with excess cash may think of it on a given day. Elon Musk ostentatiously manipulated its value when he announced that Tesla had purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin.
For anyone with billions to throw around, it’s an easy game to play. The manipulation by Musk, Peter Thiel’s former associate as co-founder of PayPal, doesn’t worry Thiel. Wondering about whether China might, in some imaginary scenario, use Bitcoin for nefarious purposes does trouble him.
Thiel represents our civilization’s new ruling elite. It consists of individuals who sit between two hyperreal worlds, one dominated by the mystique that surrounds means of payment (cash) and the control of financial flows, complemented by another that seeks political control and the hegemony required to enforce the now imaginary “civilized” rules governing financial flow. Since the demise of Bretton Woods, those rules have lost all meaning. That means the rules themselves can be weaponized. It’s a monopoly that Thiel, his fellow members of the Nixon Foundation and most people in Washington insist on reserving for the US.
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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US in ‘close consultations’ with allies on possible action over Beijing Olympics
by Evelyn Reynolds 7 April 2021, 11:33
The US state department said on Tuesday the Biden administration is consulting with allies about a joint approach to China and its human rights record, including how to handle the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics.The department initially suggested that an Olympic boycott to protest China’s human rights abuses was among the possibilities, but a senior official said later that a boycott has not yet been discussed.The official said the US position on the 2022 Games had not changed but that the administration is in frequent contact with allies and partners about their common concerns about China. Department spokesman Ned Price said earlier the consultations were being held in order to present a united front.“Part of our review of those Olympics and our thinking will involve close consultations with partners and allies around the world,” Price told reporters.Human rights groups are protesting China’s hosting of the Games, which are set to start in February 2022. They have urged a diplomatic or straight-up boycott of the event to call attention to alleged Chinese abuses against Uyghurs, Tibetans and residents of Hong Kong.Price declined to say when a decision on the Olympics would be made but noted there is still almost a year until the Games are set to begin.“These Games remain some time away. I wouldn’t want to put a timeframe on it, but these discussions are underway,” he said. “It is something that we certainly wish to discuss and it is certainly something that we understand that a coordinated approach will be not only in our interest, but also in the interest of our allies and partners. So this is one of the issues that is on the agenda, both now and going forward.”The Beijing Winter Olympics open on 4 February 2022, and China has denied all charges of human rights abuses. It says “political motives” underlie the boycott effort.Rights groups have met with the International Olympic Committee and have been told the Olympic body must stay politically “neutral.” They have been told by the IOC that China has given “assurances’’ about human rights conditions.Both the IOC and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee have said in the past they oppose boycotts.In March, IOC president Thomas Bach said history shows that boycotts never achieve anything. “It also has no logic,” he said. “Why would you punish the athletes from your own country if you have a dispute with a government from another country? This just makes no real sense.”The USOPC has questioned the effectiveness of boycotts. “We oppose Games boycotts because they have been shown to negatively impact athletes while not effectively addressing global issues,” it said. “We believe the more effective course of action is for the governments of the world and China to engage directly on human rights and geopolitical issues.” More
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Escaping Thucydides’ Trap: Keeping the Peace Between Rising and Reigning Powers
by Philippa Kaur 5 April 2021, 17:28
A conflict between the United States and China seems increasingly likely. A trade war that began several years ago has had economic repercussions for both sides. In the South China Sea, Chinese aggression against Taiwan is checked by the US military. In cybersphere, the war has already begun, as American and Chinese hackers attempt to exploit weaknesses in each other’s online defenses for military, political and economic information.
With this ever-increasing antagonism between China and the US playing out on the world stage, little imagination is required to appreciate the catastrophic result of a conflict between the world’s two largest economies with nuclear triads.
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Several years ago, Dr. Graham Allison of Harvard University unveiled a historical pattern where increasing tensions between rising and reigning states led to diplomatic friction and war. Allison dubbed this pattern Thucydides’ Trap, in honor of the Athenian strategos who identified “the growth of the Athenian power, which [put] the Lacedaemonians into fear” as a cause of the Peloponnesian War between 431 and 404 BC. Allison identified 16 cases throughout history in which the rise of a rival state provoked a response from an existing hegemonic power. In 12 of those cases, titanic wars followed, while peace prevailed in only four.
So, what lessons do the four cases with a peaceful ending offer when considering the nascent Sino-American rivalry? Close examination reveals that military, economic and political considerations contributed to a diplomatic decision for peace. In every case, both sides were vulnerable to substantial military losses in terms of personnel and equipment. The winner of the contest would find economic gains that paled in comparison to what they could have achieved in peacetime, and the loser could expect nothing short of economic devastation. Likewise, winning these conflicts could leave the victor weakened politically and almost certainly lead to the deposition of the loser. Victory in each case would have been Pyrrhic in human, economic and political terms. Defeat would have been near annihilation.
Thus, the four cases in which adversaries escaped the trap provide potential avenues for China and the US to do the same.
Spain vs. Portugal
In the late 15th century, the Iberian Peninsula held two of Europe’s economic and military powerhouses: Spain and Portugal. In Portugal, the reign of Henry the Navigator ushered in a period of exploration and colonization in Africa. Through a combination of squeezing out rivals and occupying key positions in the Eastern Atlantic, Portugal was able to utilize important sea lanes to facilitate trade with western Africa. However, the War of Castilian Succession between 1475 and 1479 ended with a unified Castille and Aragon, greatly shifting the balance of power by creating a unified Spain.
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After the Reconquista ended with the capture of Granada in 1492, Portugal’s trading empire was exposed to a newly united Spain. Flush with captured Muslim treasure and in possession of an experienced military, Ferdinand and Isabella needed only to look west to find targets for future expansion. Later that year, the discovery of the Americas and the potential for economic dominance over two continents made war even more likely. Yet Spain and Portugal were able to negotiate the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. In doing so, they averted a potentially brutal military conflict.
Subsequently, Spain and Portugal concentrated their militaries and economic might into their colonial empires. Spanish colonies in Latin America and the Pacific created a colonial empire that only crested in the 18th century. Portugal’s possessions in Brazil, Africa, India and the Far East allowed it to access spice markets, and it generated a Portuguese-Indian sea trade monopoly. Though both empires eventually faded, their shared peace allowed each of them to experience massive economic growth — albeit at the cost of the indigenous peoples they attacked and enslaved in doing so.
The example illustrates an emphasis on foreign trade and domestic investment instead of escalation to war. As a result of their peaceful settlement of tensions and the ensuing economic boom, Spain and Portugal became more politically stable. The new Spanish monarchy consolidated its power after 1492, making its previously multifaith state into a Catholic stronghold and ensuring that the ties between Aragon and Castille were permanent. Meanwhile, spurred on by strong trade from their colonies, Portugal was able to endeavor its Renaissance.
The United States vs. the United Kingdom
The precipitous rise of American industrialism and the modernization of the US Navy challenged British domination of the seas at the turn of the 20th century. As American factory output, as well as iron and steel production, surged, the US built a formidable modern battle fleet of the latest capital ship designs. Consequently, the British government realized that the cost of a conflict was something it could ill afford. By the early 20th century, the first lord of the Admiralty admitted that the United States could create a larger navy than the British Empire.
A territorial dispute over Venezuela in 1895 threatened to ignite a third Anglo-American war, creating economic panic. By 1901, the British Admiralty realized that the US Navy would soon possess the potential to outstrip the British Grand Fleet. Thanks to the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the leadership of President Theodore Roosevelt, American naval tonnage had tripled from 1900 to 1910. Britain’s ability to maintain a stronger navy than its allies was threatened by this massive growth.
Meanwhile, Britain was also engaged in a naval race with Germany, its primary antagonist during the era. The rapid construction of the German high seas fleet with the latest armor and guns threatened the British coastline and maritime trade routes in the event of a war. Faced with two bids for naval supremacy, the UK concentrated on the German threat and ignored American naval competition. By exempting the US from the two-power standard (to have as many battleships as its next two great competitors, plus 10%), and by leaving the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine unchallenged, Britain was able to deescalate the potential conflict between the two countries.
As a result of this diplomatic and military resolution, Britain’s prudence soon netted extensive economic and national security gains. As the Great War commenced, Britain’s war economy relied increasingly on raw materials, munitions production and food supplies from the United States. This ongoing trade, coupled with Imperial Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare and the revelation of the Zimmerman Telegram, helped propel the US into declaring war on Germany in April 1917 and thus into becoming an ally to its onetime rival. By averting a war, Britain was able to win another, one with truly disastrous consequences for European liberty had it lost.
Although its enemies were dismembered or subjected to humiliating terms that sowed the seeds of political violence and the Second World War, the UK enjoyed a period of political continuity, which helped its victory against Nazi Germany in 1945 and led to a more gradual dissolution of the British Empire by the 1960s.
The Soviet Union vs. the United States
Following a joint victory in World War II, tensions rose rapidly between the United States and the Soviet Union. A 40-year rivalry and a nuclear arms race threatened the world with a mutually annihilating conflict. But despite multiple flashpoints, such as the Berlin Blockade of 1948-49 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the Cold War never fully went hot.
Though the phrase “mutually assured destruction” is typically used to refer to destruction by nuclear weapons, a conflict even before both sides wielded large arsenals could have been catastrophic. The Soviet Union was savaged by the Second World War with an estimated 24 to 27 million deaths and could not afford another conflict in the immediate aftermath. Though the United States held a stronger economic position, it realized that an invasion of the Soviet Union was likely to end the same way it did for the Germans in the summer of 1941. Thus, for both sides, victory would have come at too great a cost.
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Reeling from the cost of total war from 1941 to 1945, the Soviet Union quickly repaired its economy and produced notable growth consistently. Its annual gross national product (GNP) rose by 5.7% from 1950 to 1960 and 5.2% from 1960 to 1970. At the same time, the US experienced unprecedented development. This was due in part to geographic isolation from Europe during World War II, which prevented extensive damage to American industries. The inception of new industries such as television, the rise of suburbia and government investment in infrastructure helped the US economy expand continuously for decades after 1945. The resources for each nation’s respective economic success would not have been available if they had chosen to start a third world war.
Extensive proxy wars led by the US and the Soviet Union offered glimpses of the destruction and economic hardship that would have ensued if NATO combated the Warsaw Pact. From 1955 to 1975, the United States fought a desperate containment war against insurgents in Vietnam that ended with a communist victory and the destabilization of several other countries in Southeast Asia. In Afghanistan, the Soviets spent 10 years trying to suppress the mujahadeen before their ignominious withdrawal in 1989.
Both conflicts resulted in the US and Soviet Union suffering tens of thousands of casualties among military service members, while causing even higher death tolls among the people of Vietnam and Afghanistan. Those wars also cost the US and the Soviet Union large sums of money that could not be regenerated, prompting economic hardship. The price of these proxy wars, terrible as they were in their own right, offered a window to the horror that would have ensued if the two superpowers had gone to war.
Eventually, the nonviolent end of the Cold War brought with it far greater political stability than a military tête-à-tête between the Americans and Soviets would have done. The new government of the Russian Federation was able to take power quickly and without international incident.
Germany vs. the United Kingdom and France
Following the reunification of Germany in 1990, the fear of a third world war was foremost on the mind of the British and French governments, who prepared to make an independent military alliance should Germany rearm. Understanding this fear, and with the horrors of the world wars within living memory, Germany opted against rebuilding its military to the same degree as earlier in the 20th century. The costs of the two world wars further dissuaded Germany from posturing in a way that would invite another total conflict. In this way, the Germans ensured peace for the foreseeable future in Europe.
As a result of decreased military tensions between the UK, France and Germany, Europe focused its energy on opening its borders and harmonizing its economic exploits. The continued expansion of the European Union and the introduction of the euro currency cemented these aims. All three partners benefited economically from this period of stability. In 2019, Germany had the largest national economy in Europe, followed closely by the UK and France, respectively. There is freedom of travel and ease of custom that furthers cultural interaction and social development, and Europeans are arguably happier, healthier and freer than they were at any previous point in history.
Subverting the Modern Trap
None of the four cases cited above is an exact clone of current relations between the United States and China. In both the Iberian and the American-British examples, there was a shared cultural background and a similar language between the two sides that doubtlessly contributed toward peace. During the Second World War, the US and the Soviet Union formed a military alliance that defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. By contrast, the US assisted nationalist forces during the Chinese Civil War of 1945-49 and combated Chinese communist soldiers during the Korean War of 1950-53. In the late 1980s, memories of both world wars provided Britain, France and Germany with enough incentive to resolve their issues peacefully.
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This does not mean there are no similarities each side can use as a guide to peace. Economic incentives played a role in the reduction of tensions between Spain and Portugal. Similarly, ending the trade war between the US and China and resuming normal economic ties would help fill each nation’s coffers. The United States and Great Britain were able to ally before combating a single enemy. If climate change were viewed as a shared problem, the US and China could ally to combat it together.
Finally, the US and China do not share a land border, which was also true of the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War; this reduces the opportunity for an overzealous or nervous service member to inadvertently start a conflict. Both countries, in addition, are important members of the United Nations, which mirrors how Britain, France and Germany were important members of the European Union and NATO.
Graham Allison’s analysis of relations between rising and reigning powers paints a grim future, one in which two powerful nations armed with nuclear weapons fight one another. To avoid such a future, the American and Chinese governments must strive to understand the lessons of the past. They must learn about the instances in which Thucydides’ Trap did not spring. Diplomacy between the two powers must always be pragmatic, and each side should understand that they will never get everything they want at the negotiating table. Finally, each side must scale down their military presence, particularly in the South China Sea, before a misstep or negligent discharge can potentially ignite a global war.
By recognizing the devastating harm that would occur in the event of a war, and the potential for economic growth and political stability if peace is sustained, two of the world’s largest powers can concentrate on shared goals and projects for mutual benefit. This will not be easy. But, as Benjamin Franklin once observed, “There has never been a good war or a bad peace.”
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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