Tag Archives: United States foreign policy

ChiMerica 5.

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            For decades after the death of Mao Zedong, China’s national policies were set by Deng Xiaoping and his like-minded successors.  China opened itself to the world, carried out major reforms, and pursued rapid economic growth.  An enhanced international power would surely come as a result of these policies.  Yet, it seemed to many foreign observers, that China would progressively integrate itself into a larger world system.  These hopes have been abridged.

How should we understand Xi Jinping, leader-for-life of contemporary China?  A recent book on Xi’s political thought as revealed in his speeches and writings cast some light on the issue.[1]  Xi possesses—or is possessed by—vast ambition for China.  He aims at the “rejuvenation” of his country by a Leninist dictatorship.  He wants to return China to its one-time status as the greatest nation in the world.  On the one hand, Xi’s aims mean asserting the power of the Communist Party as the guide of the nation in all political and economic matters.  He found the Chinese Communist Party demoralized by a loss of purpose.  He found it riddled with corruption.  Xi’s anti-corruption campaigns began by purging many of his enemies or rivals, but they seem not to have stopped there.  Xi’s reassertion of party primacy gives him a powerful lever to guide and to mobilize the Chinese people.   

On the other hand, Xi’s aims require displacing the United States from its long role as guardian of what might be called “American Asia”: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Vietnam.  As one of the means to this end, China has carried out a massive military build-up.  China has been asserting its claim to the South China Sea as a kind of Chinese lake, rather than an open international waterway. 

            Xi’s ambition is bad for the United States and bad for the states of “American Asia.”  Among these states, Japan serves as the linch-pin of the American position and it is a natural bete-noire for Xi.  Japan’s brutal behavior in Asia during the Second World War gives Xi’s propaganda a lot to work with in mobilizing Chinese opinion.  China’s battering of the fishing fleets and coast guards of the peripheral states around the South China Sea aims at controlling one of Japan’s main lines of trade. 

            Xi has been at this for a dozen years.  He has set his target date for the completion of China’s rejuvenation as 2050.  The end date is well after Xi will have shuffled off the scene.  He has been working hard to instill “Xi Jinping Thought” as the guiding ideology for his country. 

            The United States has been struggling to respond to the new China.  The presidential transition from the Democrat Joe Biden to the Republican Donald Trump requires a review of the essential questions.  How widely understood is the seriousness of China’s challenge?  Can anyone craft a plan for a successful response to China’s challenge?  Is it possible for the United States to mobilize the military and diplomatic resources needed to meet the challenge?   

            Countries close to China seem to profess the most confidence in the American alliance.  Perhaps they have no choice but to believe it.  Countries farther away in Southeast Asia are more skeptical.  One theory is that the evident inadequate level of American military power gives them pause.  So, is America bluffing when it claims that it will support its allies?  If so, then Asian countries will spot that like a leopard spots a limp. 

[1] Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung, The Political Thought of Xi Jinping (2025), brought to my attention by Walter Russell Mead, “Does Biden Take China’s Threat Seriously?” WSJ, 9 April 2024. 

CrISIS 6.

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The Turks want the Assad regime gone as a first order of business, and they are attacking Kurdish forces as a second order target. The Saudis want the Assad regime gone and they are attacking Houthis in Yemen as a second order target. The Russians want the Assad regime to remain in place and they are attacking non-ISIS opponents of the regime. The Iranians want the Assad regime to remain in place and they have committed both their own military advisers and client Hezbollah forces from Lebanon to that end. The Shi’ite government if Iraq isn’t making any concessions to the Sunnis of Iraq in order to win them away from ISIS. In the past year, Germany has received about a million refugees from the Syrian civil war. The Kurds are fighting ISIS, even if the rest of the Iraqis are making a half-hearted effort, but that’s because they are trying to establish the territorial basis for an independent Kurdistan. Germans are more concerned about the behavior of Muslim hicks toward European women than they are about the undoubted dangers of terrorist wolves hiding among the refugee sheep. In short, nobody—except American politicians—seems very concerned about ISIS these days.

The common assumption on the Potomac seems to be that ISIS has gigantic ambitions and will seek to wreak havoc in Western countries through terrorism. However, ISIS has little chance of expanding its territory. It made big gains in areas where the opposing forces were rotted by demoralization or were pre-occupied with other conflicts. There is little chance that it can make similar progress against the armies of Turkey, Iran, and Israel. It may not even want to make huge gains. In the words of one observer, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “wanted to create an Islamic state in Syria—sacred land that, according to Islamic prophecy, was to be the site of the apocalypse.”[1] (See: Islamism as a Story.) That’s not quite the same as conquering the whole of the Middle East.

Heightened security in Western countries can limit the danger of ISIS terrorism, even if it cannot totally prevent it. The Israelis have lived with this danger for decades. OK, it hasn’t done their society and politics a lot of good. Still, Israel is still there. ISIS poses no existential threat to Western countries.

That isn’t the same as saying that ISIS hasn’t created problems. The European vulnerability to the flood of Syrian (and other) refugees has opened a means for other states to pressure the Europeans. Turkey started the process, but the Russians are in a position to either add to or to reduce the flood. What would the West give Russia to get it to play ball in Syria? Probably it will not be much fun to be a Ukrainian.[2] Probably it will involve a climb-down on sanctions. Probably it will involve letting the Assad regime survive or transition out on Russian and Iranian terms.

[1] Sohrab Amari, WSJ, 9 February 2016, p. A11.

[2] At the same time, Western democracies already seem to be experiencing buyer’s remorse over their support for Ukraine. Pervasive corruption and a very halting program of economic modernization are angering many people who didn’t look closely at the Ukraine or at its quarrels with Russia before the most recent revolution.