by Ron Unz, The Unz Review:
The New American Cold War Against China
Over the last year I gradually became familiar with Chas Freeman, one of America’s most distinguished professional diplomats and a longtime expert on China. Despite his illustrious career, he had rarely appeared anywhere in our mainstream media, but once I discovered his interviews on several YouTube channels, I was extremely impressed by the depth of his knowledge and analysis, so I published an article presenting his views.
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In one of his public lectures, he suggested that America’s new Cold War against China had many similarities to our previous conflict against the USSR, except that this time we were playing the role of our old vanquished adversary, an analogy I had frequently expressed myself:
In international affairs, as in physics, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Our actions have stimulated China to mirror, meet, and match our military hostility to it. We are now in an arms race with China, and it is far from clear that we are holding our own…
Despite China’s remarkable military buildup, Beijing has so far kept defense spending well below two percent of GDP. Meanwhile, cost control continues to elude the Pentagon. DoD has never passed an audit and is infamous for the waste, fraud, and mismanagement that result from its reliance on cost-plus procurement from the U.S. equivalent of profit-driven state-owned enterprises – military-industrial corporate bureaucracies whose revenues (and profits) come entirely from the government. The U.S. defense budget is out of control in terms of our ability to pay for it.
Four decades ago, the United States bankrupted the Soviet Union by forcing it to devote ever more of its economy to defense while neglecting the welfare of its citizens. Now we Americans are diverting ever more borrowed and taxpayer dollars to our military even as our human and physical infrastructure decays. In some ways, in relation to China, we are now in the position of the USSR in the Cold War. Our fiscal trajectory is injurious to the general welfare of Americans. That, along with our liberties, is, however, what our armed forces are meant to defend.
Around that same time, someone else brought to my attention some of the YouTube channels created by Westerners who documented their travels to various foreign lands including China, or those who had actually moved to that country and were living there. I was fascinated to discover the existence of such widespread sources of personal, first-hand information about the reality of life in that enormous country, including both its huge cities and its small rural villages. After spending a couple of days viewing dozens of such videos, I published an article presenting some of my conclusions:
Originally Posted at https://www.sgtreport.com