After the 19th national
congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October, one may discern Premier Xi
Jinping’s vision of the emerging New World Order.
By 2049, the centennial of the triumph of Communist Revolution,
China shall have become the first power on earth. Her occupation and
humiliation by the West and Japan in the 19th and 20th centuries will have
become hated but ancient history.
America will have been pushed out of Asia and the western
Pacific back beyond the second chain of islands.
Taiwan will have been returned to the motherland, South Korea
and the Philippines neutralized, Japan contained. China’s claim to all the
rocks, reefs and islets in the South China Sea will have been recognized by all
current claimants.
Xi’s “One Belt, One Road” strategy will have brought South and
Central Asia into Beijing’s orbit, and he will be in the Pantheon beside the
Founding Father of Communist China, Mao Zedong.
Democracy has been rejected by China in favor of one-party rule
of all political, economic, cultural and social life.
And as one views Europe, depopulating, riven by secessionism,
fearful of a Third World migrant invasion, and America tearing herself apart
over politics and ideology, China must appear to ambitious and rising powers as
the model to emulate.
Indeed, has not China shown the world that authoritarianism can
be compatible with national growth that outstrips a democratic West?
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Over the last quarter century, China, thanks to economic
nationalism and $4 trillion in trade surpluses with the United States, has
exhibited growth unseen since 19th-century America.
Whatever we may think of Xi’s methods, this vision must attract
vast numbers of China’s young — they see their country displace America as
first power, becoming the dominant people on earth.
What is America’s vision? What is America’s cause in the 21st
century? What is the mission and goal that unites, inspires and drives us on?
After World War II, America’s foreign policy was imposed upon
her by the terrible realities the war produced: brutalitarian Stalinist
domination of Eastern and Central Europe and much of Asia.
Under nine presidents, containment of the Soviet empire, while
avoiding a war that would destroy civilization, was our policy. In Korea and
Vietnam, Americans died in the thousands to sustain that policy.
But with the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the breakup of
the USSR, it seemed that by 1992 our great work was done. Now democracy would
flourish and be embraced by all advanced peoples and nations.
But it did not happen. The “end of history” never came. The New
World Order of Bush I did not last. Bush II’s democracy crusade to end tyranny
in our world produced disasters from Libya to Afghanistan.
Authoritarianism is now ascendant and democracy is in retreat.
Is the United States prepared to accept a world in which China,
growing at twice our rate, more united and purposeful, emerges as the dominant
power? Are we willing to acquiesce in a Chinese Century?
Or will we adopt a policy to ensure that America remains the
world’s preeminent power?
Do we have what is required in wealth, power, stamina and will
to pursue a Second Cold War to contain China, which, strategic weapons aside,
is more powerful and has greater potential than the Soviet Union ever did?
On his Asia tour, President Trump spoke of the “Indo-Pacific,”
shorthand for the proposition that the U.S., Japan, Australia and India form
the core of a coalition to maintain the balance of power in Asia and contain
the expansion of China.
Yet, before we create some Asia-Pacific NATO to corral and
contain China in this century, as we did the USSR in the 20th century, we need
to ask ourselves why.
Does China, even if she rises to surpass the U.S. in
manufacturing, technology and economic output, and is a comparable military
power, truly threaten us as the USSR did, to where we should consider war to
prevent its expansion in places like the South China Sea that are not vital to
America?
While China is a great power, she has great problems.
She is feared and disliked by her neighbors. She has territorial
quarrels with Russia, India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan. She has
separatists in Tibet and Xinjiang. Christianity is growing while Communism, the
state religion, is a dead faith. Moreover, the monopoly of power now enjoyed by
the Communist Party and Xi Jinping mean that if things go wrong, there is no
one else to blame.
Finally, why is the containment of China in Asia the
responsibility of a United States 12 time zones away? For while China seeks to
dominate Eurasia, she appears to have no desire to threaten the vital interests
of the United States. China’s Communism appears to be an ideology disbelieved
by her own people, that she does not intend to impose it on Asia or the world.
Again, are we Americans up for a Second Cold War, and, if so,
why?
