American Empire's China Hysteria
Sounding an alarm over China's imitation of our sphere of influence
The American Empire feeds on invented existential threats magnifying fleas into elephants.
First came hysteria over the Bolshevik Revolution and fear that the arc of history was bending towards Karl Marx’s economic and political fantasies shared by Fredrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto . President Woodrow Wilson intervened militarily in the Russian Civil War on behalf of White Russians committed to making Russia unsafe for democracy and to restoring the Romanov pogroms.
Hysteria over Communism persisted until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Among other things, the hysteria begot the industrial scale injustices of the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joe McCarthy’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, the overthrow of Guatemala’s Socialist Jacobo Arbenz, the botched attempt to overthrow Indonesia’s Sukarno, the faux bomber gap and missile gap, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, a 10-year illegal secret war, in Laos, the Vietnam War debacle, and chronic assassination plots.
Panic ensued when the American Empire lost its Soviet enemy. The stature, jobs, and profits of the military-industrial-security complex became problematic. The hunt was on to discover a new flea to magnify a thousand fold. International terrorism starring Osama bin Laden became the existential threat du jour. United States support of bin Laden and his mujahideen fanatics in Afghanistan opposing the Soviet invasion was airbrushed out of history. We depicted bin Laden as an invincible giant bestriding the world like a colossus intent on invading the United States to prevent men and women sitting together on busses.
Marketing international terrorism as an existential threat proved a stupendous success notwithstanding proof that the risk of an American dying from an international terrorist attack is lower than the probability of death from a falling vending machine. The United States appropriated lavish sums for the intelligence community, turned the Fourth Amendment into a museum piece, and dispatched the military abroad in search of monsters to destroy costing $8 trillion and climbing.
But the exaggerated fear of international terrorism had a limited shelf life. Bin Laden was killed. 9/11 proved a one-time fluke discrediting the periodic cries of wolf by intelligence gurus. Human Rights Watch reported that virtually all high-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the “direct involvement” of government agents or informants.
Our hysteria passed from international terrorism to China spurred by secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s brainless “pivot to Asia.”
For good or for ill, all nations seek spheres of influence within their respective neighborhoods. It is as common and unalarming as the rising and setting of the sun. Since the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the United States has asserted a sphere of influence in Central and South America and the Caribbean. Think of our domination of Cuba after the Spanish American War, our severance of Panama from Colombia to build and control the Panama Canal, our one-year invasion of Mexico ostensibly to pursue Pancho Villa, our multiple occupations or invasions of Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Grenada. Recall what national security advisor Henry Kissinger said about overthrowing Chile’s Salvador Allende: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country to go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people.”
Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. China is imitating the United States in projecting its sphere if influence in Asia and the Pacific. It is constructing islands in the South China Sea. It is dueling with Japan over the Senkaku Islands. It is saber rattling against Taiwan. It is asserting sovereignty over the Spratly Islands. It is projecting power in the Solomon Islands.
But instead of smiling at the imitation, the United States is trotting towards a disastrous war with China. We have orchestrated the Quad with India, Japan, and Australia to oppose China. President Biden has shouted at least four times he would commence war with China if it attacked Taiwan. We are imposing draconian economic and trade sanctions against China. We are selling advanced weapons to Taiwan. We are encouraging Japan to double its military spending and to weaken Article 9 in Japan’s Constitution renouncing war as an instrument of international relations. We are selling nuclear-propelled submarines to Australia and upgraded our marine training bases there.
We have declared that China should be denied access to islands it has constructed in the South China Sea. The House of Representatives has created a Select Committee to promote hysteria over a putative China threat. Even Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is playing the China card in absurdly blocking Ford Motor Company from establishing an electric battery plant in Virginia in partnership with China. Among other things, Gov. Youngkin is terrified by the prospect that China might purchase farmland.
The United States should be satisfied with its own considerable sphere of influence. The optimal way to confront China is by an example of neutrality in foreign conflicts coupled with a military strategy of invincible self-defense against any would-be foreign aggressor.
Our hearts go out to the oppressed Uyghurs and Tibetans, to the killed and jailed in Hong Kong, and to the millions of other victims of President Xi Jinping’s merciless dictatorship. But any cure administered by the United States would be far worse than the disease—a land war with China. Put another way, United States acceptance of China’s sphere of influence in Asia, the South China Sea, and the Pacific is the worst foreign policy except for all others that have been attempted or conceived.
The United States is far more an existential threat to China than the Soviet Union was to the United States during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. We were prepared to take the world to the brink of extinction to remove Soviet missiles from Cuba. Why should we believe China will react any differently to our endeavor to encircle it militarily and cripple it economically within its natural sphere of influence?