Trump personifies America

US' pre-conceived ideas about China’s actions and intentions seem to be leading Washington into a deadly trap

Whatever it was — a ‘temporary’ siege of the US Capitol by pro-Trump rioters — it shook the world to its hinges, especially the liberal democracies world over. It is, of course, up to US lawmakers to decide whether or not President Trump tried an illegitimate attempt at power grab. Or was it an attempted coup? An insurrection, maybe? Or a mere act of sedition?

The President caused a ‘temporary’ interruption of the election process — the final counting of electoral votes by both the House and the Senate — that did finally certify the victory of President-elect Joe Biden in the November 2020 election and Trump’s removal.

But what happened, no matter even if it was a temporary aberration, was waiting to happen for a long time because the US, since WWII, has been breaking all the democratic rules it had itself framed for the so-called Free World, which it had led like a hegemon.

The US often blatantly operated outside the rules making frequent military interventions with or without UN approval; and from 1947 to 1989, when the US was supposedly building up the liberal international order, it attempted regime change around the world 72 times. It did the same in the economic realm as well, engaging in protectionism as it railed against modest measures adopted by other countries. It promoted and supported military regimes in developing countries like Pakistan and Egypt and backed and militarily protected oppressive monarchies mostly in the oil-rich Middle East.

The US has entered all its major military engagements since 1945 — in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq — with great enthusiasm and bipartisan support. And then, as the war developed, domestic support for it began to come apart. Soon, everyone was searching for an exit strategy.

Still, in 2019, US troops are still on the banks of the Rhine, are still safeguarding Seoul, and are still in Okinawa.

Perhaps they are likely to remain in Afghanistan for many years to come because while for the last 20 years, the US military fought against insurgencies and guerrillas in failed states, it has, however, no clue why its expensive machinery has failed against these underequipped, cash-strapped enemies.

As China challenges America, the latter’s pre-conceived ideas about the former’s actions and intentions seem to be leading Washington into a deadly trap first identified by the ancient Greek historian, Thucydides. As he explained, “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” The past 500 years have seen 16 cases in which a rising power threatened to displace a ruling one — 12 of these ended in war.

According to Fareed Zakaria (‘The New China Scare’), the Trump administration’s approach to China ran along two distinct and contradictory tracks, at once eschewing interdependence and embracing it. On trade, Washington’s aim is, broadly speaking, integrationist: to get China to buy more from the US, invest more in it, and allow Americans to sell and invest more in China. If successful, this effort would create more interdependence between the two. “There is also human interdependence — hundreds of thousands of Chinese students who study in the US, along with the almost five million US citizens and residents of Chinese descent. The US has benefited greatly from being the place where the brightest minds gather to do the most cutting-edge research and apply it to commercial ends. If the US barred its doors to such talent because it came with the wrong passport, it would quickly lose its privileged place in the world of technology and innovation.” However, “in matters of technology the Trump administration’s approach is decidedly dis-integrationist. The strategy here is to sever ties with China and force the rest of the world to do the same. The Trump administration’s global campaign against Huawei has followed this logic,” where it asked 61 countries to ban the company. So far, only three have acceded, all close US allies.