How will the US war on China end?
The analyzes by Mearsheimer, Walt and Friedman on the trade and geopolitical war between the US and China in the analysis by Daniela Coli
The US campaign of 2020 focuses on China, the enemy of Trump and Biden, but from the speeches of the two it is not clear which strategies they will adopt because they target different constituencies and use different languages to conquer them. To understand what will happen between China and the United States, it is best to turn to the strategists, the real decision makers, together with intelligence, of wars.
For John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt and George Friedman a war with China is inevitable. Mearsheimer, like Walt, is an offensive realist: basically he is Hobbesian because he believes that international relations are dominated by anarchy, where every state is always afraid of the others and tries to become stronger, while the great powers want more and more power. Mearsheimer opposed the wars in the Middle East and was against Kissinger's policy on China, because he always believed that if China became strong and rich, inevitably, like any other power, it would become a danger to the United States. For Mearsheimer, war with China is inevitable and can become nuclear, as he declared on August 17 in a long interview with The Asahi Shinbun , one of the most authoritative Japanese newspapers. For Walt, the war with China is not an ideological war, it is a war for power, and even Mearsheimer certainly does not characterize it as a conflict between liberal democracy and communism: ideology leaves it to propaganda.
For Mearsheimer, the US cannot allow China to become hegemon in Asia, because it has not allowed Japan either. The US cannot share power with other equivalent powers. It is clear: “We have defeated imperial Germany, imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union. We cannot share power with other powers ”. Mearsheimer praises Trump for attempting to economically weaken China with tariffs, sanctions, Hong Kong, Uighurs, and pressuring Europeans and Asians to isolate China: he managed to get Huawei banned from 5G in various European countries, even though in the UK, Huawei will be banned by 2027 and by 2028 in France. Mearsheimer fears China because it is technologically superior. "The United States would like to destroy Huawei," he says. The South China Sea and Taiwan can be theaters of war, places where an "accident" is possible due to the outbreak of the conflict.
For Mearsheimer, Trump fought China well, but Biden could mend alliances in Europe and Asia to make war on China, much more dangerous than the Soviet Union because it is technologically more advanced than the US that does not have 5G. Mearsheimer is very clear: the US must have power in both the Western and Eastern hemisphere. They cannot allow China to get closer to Europe and if China becomes hegemon in Asia it will be free to enter the Western Hemisphere and form alliances with Cuba and Venezuela. The Monroe Doctrine is an indisputable principle for every American.
However, Mearsheimer's strategy is risky because it aims at the total global empire, without realizing that technology is fundamental in war and even a total empire can be vulnerable if technologically inferior. Trump has blocked supplies and services to Huawei (and 700 other companies), Google has decided to revoke the license for the Android operating system on Huawei's smartphones, but, as the Financial Times reveals, the US restrictions have not weakened Huawei that now it is able to carry out the technological decoupling from the USA.
Nor has there ever been an eternal empire. The American empire in the anxiety of expansion has, in some ways, technologically colonized China as the British empire colonized North America with immigration from the British Isles, science, technology, politics, but the colonists Americans rebelled against the motherland, fought a war of independence, founded the United States and ended up replacing the British Empire after 1945.
George Friedman also wants war on China, but he also wants to disintegrate Europe and Russia. In an August 19, 2020 article on Geopolitical Futures he claims that Poland can blow Europe and Russia. Poland and the Baltic countries do not accept a pro-Russian Belarus and Belarus is important for Russia, but also for China – we add – because Belarus connects Europe to China with the BRI and has an important Chinese technological center. For Friedman, a decisive signal for the disintegration of Europe is Angela Merkel's thanks to Latvia for supporting the demonstrators in Belarus. Germany, Friedman continues, had tried to improve relations with Russia with NordStream2 and Russia had hopes in Germany. But Merkel's thanks to Latvia places Germany in direct conflict with Russian interests, because Russia cannot live without Belarus's buffer. For this Friedman foresees a bright future for the States. Russia cannot lose Belarus after losing Ukraine, it will be forced to intervene and this will cause a war with Germany, which today is militarily weak as in 1932, but could quickly become a military power again because it is an economic power.
The Hungarian Jew Friedman repeats the same strategy used by the Polish Brzezinski to create a Vietnam for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Brezinski advised Carter in 1979 to sign a secret order to overthrow the pro-Soviet government in Kabul by arming the mujahideen and the Soviets fell into the trap.
For Friedman, the conflict between Russia and Germany could remain local, but it could also cause a conflagration that could destroy the European Union and fragment Europe. According to Friedman Xi is losing power in China and if in China if there was a struggle for power, China would also fragment. Friedman's goal is therefore to destroy Europe, Russia and China.
It is possible that the predictions of Mearsheimer and Friedman will come true, even if the story, as they say, always has a great imagination.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/come-finira-la-guerra-usa-alla-cina/ on Tue, 08 Sep 2020 14:30:22 +0000.