JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE DESTRUCTIVE URGE OF AMERICA’S POWER ESTABLISHMENT TO CONTROL EVENTS ELSEWHERE – IT SIMPLY DOES NOT BENEFIT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE OR ANY OTHER PEOPLE – CHINA HAS THE CORRECT LONG-TERM STRATEGY – INVESTING AND BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE, BUILDING JOBS, BUILDING RELATIONS, AND BUILDING FOUNDATIONS FOR INCREASED FUTURE PRODUCTIVITY – AMERICA MAKES NO SERIOUS EFFORT TO IMPROVE ITS COMPETITIVENESS – ITS ESTABLISHMENT REGARDS ITSELF AS INDISPENSABLE AND DEMANDS THAT OTHERS SEE IT THAT WAY – SOME ABSURDITIES OF AMERICA’S MILITARY AND EMPIRE – HOT PIZZA HELICOPTERED TO TROOPS – STEAK DINNERS FOR THOUSANDS ON DISTANT HIGH SEAS – AMERICA CANNOT WIN A CONVENTIONAL WAR AGAINST CHINA

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GLOBAL TIMES

 

“Is new Cold War emerging between China and US? FM spokesperson suggests two countries work together”

 

I am afraid the power establishment in the US is just not prepared psychologically for China’s rise and America’s relative decline. It is a situation in some ways potentially worse than the Cold War.

After WWII, America enjoyed extravagant privilege and power by virtue of having been the last major nation standing.

Not only were all of its competitors broken, its own industries were massively geared up by the war effort, ready with new investment to supply the world’s markets.

For some years, that set of circumstances generated a “golden era” for the United States. It even gave birth to an accompanying mythology, one summed up in the phrase, “The American Dream.”

However, bit by bit over the years, circumstances changed, as they always do in human affairs.

New, more efficient competitors emerged in many parts of the world, and, as they did so, America started to slip in its relative economic and trade importance.

America’s establishment resents the changed circumstances, but I believe, realistically, there is little it can do, and much of what it could do, it is unwilling to do, still luxuriating in a sense of entitlement bred by many years of privilege.

It can bluster and threaten and sanction and lay tariffs to create pressure, but it cannot change fundamental economic realities.

You cannot browbeat your way to greater prosperity, as Trump has tried doing. The limits of his understanding are apparent in his very own election slogan, “Make America great again.” What the slogan really is saying is, “Make it 1953 again for America,” and that literally is an impossibility.

America makes little effort to improve its competitiveness, as by replacing a great deal of old infrastructure, reinventing a poor public education system, or downsizing the immense waste of its military/intelligence apparatus, something which consumes about a trillion dollars a year. America does not save and invest adequately. It is simply not willing to sacrifice for long-term goals, and that is a fundamental weakness of the society.

While every nation needs some military, America’s military is out of all proportion to any real need, and it literally burns through resources, producing little of value. You might as well shovel resources into a pit.

The military’s value to the power establishment is about control, and I think until America abandons the illusion of its being “the indispensable nation” that should control global events, we are not likely to see much progress.

Can you imagine just the cost of keeping armadas of military ships with their huge crews and supply needs in places as far flung as near China, near Iran, and near Venezuela? Steak dinners for crews of thousands on the high seas? I am reminded of the morale-boosting practice during America’s time in Vietnam of the Army regularly baking tons of fresh pizza and helicoptering it hot to troops in the field.

And what does any of it do to benefit the people of the United States or indeed the world? The answer is, of course, nothing. And just so for the 800 to 1,000 military bases the United States maintains around the world. All of that mighty effort and expense is about control.

Control is something very difficult to relinquish when you are long used to exercising it. But the truth is that the world’s changing economic realities just will not continue to support America’s old habits.

China invests and builds. And it is even doing so in many places abroad as part of its New Silk Road Project. These are investments that will benefit China, but they also will benefit hundreds of millions of others. In the whole process, productive work is generated, new positive relationships are established, and foundations for greater future productivity are laid.

America now tries intimidating a good portion of the world to do as its leaders wish them to do, but that will not build what China is building. It is a negative and unproductive way to run a great society, one motivated by looking back to a time when privileges were enjoyed with little effort.

China has the right long-term strategy.

Of course, America’s efforts at strong-arming everyone always run the risk of igniting war. It is difficult to see how the US could possibly benefit from that. It absolutely cannot win a conventional war with China. Every capital ship in the region would be sunk in a very brief time by China’s specialized precision missiles. The losses would be horrific, and the temptation to go nuclear would be great.