Answering yesterday’s question

My thoughts but how about yours?

I encourage anyone and everyone to chime in at the end of each post. I genuinely value your thoughts and sincerely do this column to generate more measured, respectful conversation. I read each and every comment with great thanks because you are coming forward.

A former student who recently started reading Actions Create Consequences asked yesterday whether I believe China will abide by the rules for those agreements it signs. I guess I have not been clear enough: China, like most any big power, will abide by what suits the, while discarding constraints they don’t like. States pursue policies to defend their interests, pure and simple.

I hold absolutely no brief for Beijing. Their treatment of Uighurs, Islamic minorities as a whole, women, and countless other groups is appalling. My experience and reading Chinese history is that the Han, including the CCP of course, are selective in their decision-making. The Century of Humiliation is a convenient, self-serving argument which provides further evidence of victimization by foreigners rather than Chinese taking responsibility for poor choices in many cases. Yes, early 19th century Chinese priorities put some things above military modernisation because they assumed (danger, Will Robinson, danger!!) others would respect their position as Middle Kingdom. Britain led the ‘big noses’ (Including us) in dictating demands over Qing decisions to ‘humiliate’ as Chinese recall the experience. No country likes being told how to behave but China had experienced it less than many other countries at the time.

China, given the chance, does precisely the same to others. I imagine few Cambodians or Laotians are ecstatic about their dependence on China. The Democratic People’s Republic of Vietnam, long a nation unhappy about China dominating 2/3 of their country for 800 years, wish the Vietnamese and Chinese governing parties were not remnants of the only Commie rulers surviving in today’s world. But that pathetic bond between Hanoi and Beijing crops up whenever Hanoi thinks about realigning to any anti-Chinese position.

Big countries can do that. The Chinese Foreign Minister, on 19 July 2010, stormed out of the room when Secretary Hillary Clinton announced we would be available as arbitrators for multiple disputes between states surrounding in the South China Sea. Upon his return, Yang Jiechi lectured a friend (of which Beijing has precious few), the Singaporan Foreign Minister, that there are big states and little states and that is how it goes when big states get their way in disputes. It was one of the most honest statements the CCP ever made yet we continue thinking they don’t mean it. China believes size guarantees getting their way.

Of course they mean it. Beijing measures power based on things being big, thus powerful. They have only perhaps three similarly ‘big’ states to contend with as they see it: the Russian Federation, India, and the United States. In truth, the only one they really fear at present is the latter because we too are large in the same categories as them: population, land mass, economy, and innovation.

But we should not selectively ignore rules, either, without ramifications. Our decision that we will not put our armed forces under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Criminal Court receives similar condemnation to China rejecting the International Court’s decision on the South China Sea. Our arguments on the ICC ring hollow as does the Senate’s forty year refusal to ratify the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty. Actions create consequences, in this case robbing us of a meaningful voice on maritime matters. We can ignore these rules because we too are bug but the rationale we give is no better than China’s in other cases.

To answer the question asked yesterday, I stress policies and choices to fit OUR national interests rather than trying to alter Beijing’s behaviour. I find so many proposals break down in logic. If we genuinely find China as rigidly set in its ideological ways as we say, why do we think we can deter them? That makes no sense to me. Sadly, it means war as well because we are not seemingly interested in altering our goals, either, as it currently stands. States go to war when they deem their desired outcomes incompatible and unalterable. Are we there now, I truth? I worry we are.

So much of what I try to raise are points focusing our own choices and positions as they are all we can assuredly control. We cannot control China nor ought we waste efforts doing so. I admit to being drawn to George Kennan’s analysis of the Soviet threat in his 1947 ‘Mr. X’ article. Kennan at the time reminded us to put our own house in order as a pivotal move towards letting to Soviets fall of their own weight. We have incredibly deep divisions right now which we must heal to survive, much less to thrive. We are spending without taxing at appropriate levels. There is not enough discretionary spending to cut to fix this problem so let’s stop pretending otherwise.

But most relevant I ask again what are the outcomes for which it is truly worth using our precious blood and treasure to defend? Is it everything? If so, that is an unbelievable and unsustainable position under current budgetary conditions. What would it take to change our goals? If we scale back, how would we work as a society to decide what is worth it? Have we become the victim of our own successes over the past thirty-five years as deem everything existential importance? I have no false illusions this is an easy conversation but we are not conversing at all of late.

These are my thoughts but no, I don’t trust China. But I am much more worried about our own behaviour right now than I am theirs, not because they are good but because we are flailing in many important ways.

The first thing we need do, however, is understand we do a number of things quite well. But we must pay for them. We have good education but we need focus on basic civics, math, history and science for the entire society which we seem to have jettisoned over the past couple of generations. We need continue the rebuilding of our infrastructure which we allowed to collapse relatively speaking. We need recognize we have multiple tools we can use besides the military to interact with the world. We need recognize we have a whole lot more friends (definitely more than Beijing, Moscow, or Delhi) who want work with us rather than be ordered around by us. Finally, we need a government with all three branches working to govern which is no longer true. We need put efforts into our own house more than anyone else’s.

Those are my thoughts. Yours? How can we start discussing these things?

Thank you for reading today. I genuinely would like hear your thoughts. I appreciate I may well have the wrong priorities but why would you do it differently?

Be well and be safe. FIN

Mr. X, ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct’, Foreign Affairs, July 1947, retrieved at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/george-kennan-sources-soviet-conduct