Geostrategy via Economics: China Providing the U.S. with Enough Rope to Hang Itself
July 2nd, 2007For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
As good as this article is, it doesn’t mention a certain, former superpower that was also bogged down in a futile war in Eurasia when it collapsed. That’s right, I’m referring to the Soviet Union’s last strategic blunder: The invasion of Afghanistan. Remember the role the U.S. played in that conflict: funding bin Laden and the Afghan Mujahideen, providing weapons, training and intelligence throughout the 1980s…
Flash forward to today. Far from being a superpower, the U.S. couldn’t even afford the rope necessary to hang itself.
China has lots of rope.
Of course, the Chinese are screwed too, and they know it (they’re now scrambling for everything from wheat to copper to oil). But if you know that you’re going to have to fight a guy, it’s a good thing if he gets his ass kicked by someone else when he’s on his way to fight you.
Via: Austin Chronicle:
The Washington Post (May 8, p.D1): “Joseph E. Stiglitz [Nobel winner in economics] … co-authored a study that predicts the Iraq conflict alone will eventually cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion, counting military rebuilding and health care for wounded veterans.” Incredibly, we haven’t paid for any of this yet. The Post article noted, “The war bill is going directly on the nation’s credit card.” Foreign investors, especially China, have been paying for this war.
Now why would they do that? The answer: It’s in their strategic interest to finance a war that drains America’s financial, military, and leadership clout. They’re paying for us to screw ourselves. It saves them the trouble. However, given the irresponsibility of America’s military adventures and the equal irresponsibility of the American electorate in elevating someone like George W. Bush to power, why would China and the other investing nations finance the rebuilding of America’s military might? How could that possibly be in their interest – especially now that the euro has overtaken the dollar as a viable medium for world exchange? Hence China and others are making obvious moves to invest differently. We’re about to be left behind.
We’re still important, a big economy, a player. We’re still dangerous, with all our bombs and missiles. But we won’t be fighting another ground war anytime soon, and everybody knows it. Financially and militarily, we’re no superpower anymore – though no presidential candidate can say that. Whether we recede from center stage gracefully or destructively, we’ll recede. We already have. It doesn’t look that way on TV, but we already have.
“China Supplies Weapons to Insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan”
http://www.captainsjournal.com/2007/06/15/china-supplies-weapons-to-insurgencies-in-iraq-and-afghanistan/
This still assumes there is such a thing as “China” vs. the “United States.”
Not that there isn’t, but perhaps the U.S. plays bad cop to China’s good cop as an international hegemonic force, regardless of domestic policy.
There was recently an article on China as good hegemonic force in Africa.
I’m very curious as to China’s role in the “kill off” scenario.